A Song of Suffering

Lydia, Melanie & Joshua Rosenthal, PhD

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2011

ISBN 978-1-105-29435-8

In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life. - Luther Oh death, where is your sting? 1 Corinthians 15:55 It's worse than you think. It's much better too. Not yet, soon. How long, oh Lord?

CONTENTS

PART ONE: Why suffering? What does it mean? Why does God have it this way? Chapter One 32 Days A - An Introduction Chapter Two 31 Days B - Suffering and God Chapter Three 30 Days C - Suffering and the Christian God Chapter Four 28 Days D - Suffering and the Gospel Chapter Five 26 Days E - Suffering and the Cross PART TWO: What do I do now? How then do I live? Chapter Six 15 Days E' - Suffering and Union with Christ Chapter Seven 8 Days D' - Suffering and the Hiddenness of God Chapter Eight 5 Days C' - Suffering and the Church Chapter Nine The Next Day B' - Suffering and the World

Chapter Ten The Day After A' - A Conclusion Appendix

Part One: Why suffering? What does it mean? Why does God have it this way?

Chapter One 32 Days Lydia was born healthy, at home, under the watch of a midwife, Jennifer, trustworthy as a friend and in her profession, someone who had successfully caught more babies than she could remember. Lydia had never been sick a day in her one and a half years of life. Ezra's pregnancy was very similar to Lydias. It followed the same pattern; the same tests confirmed a good birth to come. The contractions were similar, following an identical pattern. The only difference was whereas Lydia was born in the early summer heat of Kentucky, Ezra met the beginning of winter with snow blanketing the ground. Josh had been sick, vomiting throughout the night, but was present and ready despite this glitch. He had dropped Lydia off with her grandparents and all was ready. As evening turned to morning Melanie's contractions began to quicken and become more intense. Contractions with Lydia slowly built up and so we had time and knew exactly when to call Jennifer. The contractions with Ezra began coming faster and more intensely than anticipated and so we called Jennifer and the doula, Susan, experienced and likewise a friend. All is well; that feeling of contentment, even excitement, in the midst of labor. At Lydia's birth, Melanie couldn't keep food down and was exhausted from it. With Ezra it was not so bad and she was actually enjoying the experience. That euphoria from anticipation of the miraculous mixed with physical pain. The contractions quicken and labor began. This labor would be much shorter, birth would mostly come after dawn and we'd have the rest of the day to settle in as a new family. Jennifer arrives with her apprentice and Susan as labor turns to birth. Ezra's arms come out, and Melanie watches, something she wasn't able to do with Lydia with whom she had vomited so violently her glasses had fallen off. But Ezras birth, she was able to see. She could see that he is a baby boy. His arms are out. And then, in the little blink of an eye, in the gasp between two breaths, the world changes. Ezra is stuck. The cord is wrapped around his neck. Melanie waits for another contraction to push him out as he begins to
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show signs of distress. We cut the cord to help him get out. The clock is now ticking. The last contraction never comes. Melanie cannot feel him. Her body thinks that he is already out. She can hear Melanie, push this baby out. But she can't feel anything to push. She can hear the call to 911, hear them ask for the address. She changes positions and is finally able to get him out. She looks behind her and sees Ezra lying motionless on the bed, blue. We never hear him cry. This cannot be happening. This is bad dream. A mistake. Several short prayers. All so far unanswered. Just a great silence as we spiral down. But this is no time for shock. No time for sadness. Events are moving and things are happening around us. We must now act, doing whatever we can, oblivious to the road ahead. Into this territory we turn and run. A - An Introduction This is the story of losing our son and wrestling with God. Of understanding how and why a good God, a God that we truly believe is all powerful and at the same time knows the number of hairs on our heads, how this God could allow Ezra to die. Cue the beckoning bright light at the end of the tunnel, the brush of angel wings, the dreams of heaven that comfort, and the feelings of warmth in the midst of despair that reassure. But none of this has been our experience. When we needed God the most, in our deepest and darkest hour of grief and despair, our God was silent. He was hidden. So please read on if you think it might be worthwhile, but know that this book isn't really for you, nor is it a personal therapy for us. Actually it's Ezra's testimony, a chronicle of his experience and what it means for him, as well as for us. We're honored youre reading it, but if you get bored, disgusted or the like, or simply don't feel like it, that's okay too. Youre not the audience. Its penned for the angles and demons. If no one should ever open this its enough that its written, that Ezras voice has shape and form and that his story and testimony has a place in the cosmic record, a profession of faith and an expression of defiance and even mockery. This is story of suffering in all its forms, physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual. Its a story about the suffering and death of Ezra, our newborn baby, and of us and others who loved him. Story isnt
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the right word, its probably more like babbling and most likely many things wont apply to or even interest you. Take what you can and dismiss the rest. This isnt a treatise or tract about what we believe its not really even prose. Its more a series of consolations we wrote to remind ourselves. We go back and forth between our story and our processing it looking at the experience with different lenses. So theres a descent amount of repetition. Feel free and skip around, different lenses are more interesting to look through for different people. When we say silly things, the outright absurd or the joke about something we shouldn't, chalk it up to grief. If we say something -- or believe something -- outrageous, small-minded, ethnocentric-centric, culturally biased, close-minded, deterministically-rational, clueless-ly anti-rational, hopelessly Western, extreme or exclusive, try and give us the benefit of the doubt. Chalk up all these faults to the cumulative effect of sleepless nights and post traumatic stress, or limited experience and narrow outlook. We live in Kentucky and drink a lot of bourbon, more as of late. Or credit it to poor and biased education. On one hand, a formative upbringing far outside the protected canopy of a Christian school system, Ivy League and all that science stuff that should make a good Christian skeptical such as human genome research, evolutionary biology the like. On the other hand, hopelessly parochial in indoctrination and esoteric academia -Masters degrees in theology and a PhD in Reformation and Renaissance History, all under an ancient regime of old, white men nearsighted and focused on Martin Luther -- dead with their books and outlooks collecting dust, folks like Heiko Oberman, George Forrell, James Kittleson and the like. Science and theology are two legs of this stool, the third is religious anthropology. Reading and admiration includes folks like Joseph Campbell, better known to hippies as the follow-your-bliss guy and his more refined counterpart Mircea Eliade (like Campbell but without the magic mushrooms). Basically all that myth and ritual stuff that your kooky old anthropology professor rambled on about -- you know, the guy that wore hemp clothes he sewed himself and who kept all the wooden masks in his office. Studies include work with one particular professor in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, a dinosaur in his own right with a dangerous method of using the 'secular' advances in the field for interpreting the Jewish and Christian scriptures. So if this story rubs you wrong, its obviously because of us and we didn't really stand a chance with that sort of bias. In any case, you now know
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where were coming from. Science and elitism coupled with too much time with dead white men's esoteric interpretations of other dead white men's thoughts mixed with kooky religious anthropologists applying secular learning of the cultures that surrounded sacred texts. So we will occasionally reference old, dead white men and other folks as well. Not citations, just paraphrases, the gist of the idea. If youre after a particular reference, see the list of resources at the back of the book. We'll also reference pop culture, movies, music and books with most of them ranging from silly to ridiculous. Most of this will be esoteric but its but meaningful to us. There are a lot of things out there that speak to suffering and sacrifice, even if buried under the surface of the pop culture or outright silliness. We'll also reference some things in the Christian scriptures. For us, they are the literal words of God, written through the agency of men in real historical situations, wrestling with real issues and emotions such ecstasy, zeal, despair, and abandonment. But if you don't buy that, so be it. Read it as literature, as poetry, as beautiful words wrestling with suffering, pain and their meaning. Take what you can. We'll also say some things that seem ego-centric. They probably are. In any case, please read them as lightly as you can or just skip them. If we say something about how we or our baby did something that seems good, we're not saying that we're doing well. Or that we're good people. If we included our failures, how we didnt do what we could or should have done or outright did the opposite of it, this book would be far too long; War and Peace long, Lord of the Rings long. On that note, if we mention something we did, said or felt to illustrate a point, perhaps about how we see God acting in others and even ourselves, that doesnt mean we're claiming to be good or worthy of it; far from it. Gods been known to use thieves murders and worse, even Satan himself to execute Gods plans, to turn evil on its ear. Rocks, sticks and stones, even the occasional donkey make the list of objects God uses to execute his plans, the jackass probably more appropriate in our case. As long as were confessing, we're members of a church. The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Church. Old, white, German. So doctrinally conservative we won't formally recognize other old, white German churches that are themselves too conservative for modern taste. Unbelievably conservative with stuff like Adam & Eve as real historical people, Christ's resurrection as a real historical event, the inerrancy of the Christian Scriptures -- a long, long list. We're hopeless. Everybody is the product of their biases, their beliefs, and the hidden structures that color

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and shape their thoughts religious or not, but were especially bad with many biases not only hidden but open. Know that as you read. But those beliefs dont make a story. Its what happens when they meet an experience that flies in their face and seemingly discredits them, a juxtaposition that pits the intellectual content of belief, so hidden and unbelievable, squarely against the emotional and psychological experience of suffering, so clear and obvious and real. It's one thing to profess faith in a loving, merciful God who looks out for your best interests and works out all things for good. It's another to believe that in the face of your infant turning blue and screaming from suffocating to death, night after night, after night. It's one thing to study about Martin Luther and his take on the hiddenness of God and the dark night of the soul, it's another thing to agonizingly weep at the death of your 32 day old son. It's one thing to recount esoteric philosophies of paradox and how Luther saw them as ways to understand the limits of understanding, the Christian God and the Christian experience of life. It's another thing entirely to attempt to reconcile your feelings of complete abandonment to a purportedly loving Gods promises of comfort, peace and even joy.

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Chapter Two 31 Days The firefighters come, followed by the paramedics. They begin CPR and take Ezra in an ambulance. Susan ensures that Josh rides with them. In the ambulance it is somber and tense. Only the sounds of the CPR, rhythmic, break the silence. We cut through the quiet of early morning, flying through the streets to the entrance ER at the children's hospital. Door to door in less than five minutes. The doctors take Ezra into a room. It's a scene from a TV show. Ezras surrounded by nurses and machines conducted by a young doctor. Josh waits outside the door along with the Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) including the ambulance driver. The doctors announce they have a heart beat again, and then Ezra begins to breathe. The trauma at birth was against the odds, the revival more so. One prayer answered. Josh enters the ER room, explains to the doctor that he's going to baptize Ezra and then be out of the way. The doctor nods, explaining to the quizzical and bewildered nurses to get some water and move out of the way for a moment. Haltingly, Ezra, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Another prayer answered. Emergency baptism in the 21st century, starkly odd against the backdrop of advanced medical machines. A subject for esoteric studies now practiced here in a modern ER. Surreal. The doctor comes over and says, quietly, I'm really glad you did that. That explains the ease of granting access for the baptism. One of the benefits of living in a community so heavily Roman Catholic. The doctor then explains that they will take Ezra up to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). His heartbeat and breath offer a mere chance at life. There will most likely be damage we dont know how much, anything from catastrophic to mild or moderate, from a vegetative state to a more mild condition that can be treated or managed with various therapies. His bodys working and there's no major damage to internal organs. But he's had massive brain trauma. They will put him on a new protocol, cooling his core body temperature for three days. We'll meet in the NICU upstairs. Different nurses come up and quietly ask if they can say a prayer for Ezra. They are hushed, reverent, and personally concerned. They've seen this before and know the likely ending. Few jobs must be more difficult.
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Their prayers are readily accepted. They bring out a chaplain, archetype of a southern Baptist, well meaning but with little meaningful to say and quickly dismissed. Josh calls Reverend Lange with a message, unexpected and unlooked for. It's hard to describe what constitutes a person whom one can trust, one with a meaningful message of life and death. We're grateful. He'll be down shortly. As Ezra and Josh rushed away in the ambulance Melanie cleaned up. The EMTs had put her on a stretcher explaining that they were taking her to a different hospital. She refuses and drives to the hospital with Jennifer. We all meet in the NICU. It's not a scene of wailing and weeping as one might expect, but of quiet intensity and reserve. More the feeling around an unfolding battle, it's planning and it's fighting. We are all doing our parts, and we wait. The same doctors come out to brief us. It's tough to remember this initial conversation but they convey essentially the same thing as before. Most likely very bad damage. Unknown prognosis. Cooling treatment is next step. We can go in and see him. He lays completely motionless as he would for the next 72 hours. B - Suffering and God If I were God, I'd do things differently. Really differently. Why all the suffering, the misery? Sure there are some good times, but they're short lived and ultimately wilt like grass. And the pain. Don't even get me started. If I knew everything, and could do anything, how could I not create a perfect world? It would sure be better than this dump. African tribes slaughtering each other with machetes. Babies dying. That relative, you know who I'm talking about. Oh, and getting up early to go to work. Not a chance. Turn on the nature channel and animals are eating each other alive. Watch the news and tidal waves are wiping out little villages. Oh, and all the religious wars and inquisitions and the like; people killing and torturing each other in the name of faith in a peaceful God. Talk about hypocrisy, him allowing that. Hmmpf. So how exactly, does God end up butchering this? Plenty of folks make the case and it usually goes something like this. Pop scientist with a new anti-God book makes the speaking rounds and enrages evangelicals and hes quickly met by some evangelical pseudo-scientist offering rebuttal in his own pro-God book. They deserve one another, but neither is interesting, and both miss the point.
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It's as if a baker claims theres no such thing as a farm. After all, he knows all the recipes for the food and he simply picks it up from the store. He spent years learning techniques at Cordon Bleu for making a proper souffl and the idea of a farm isn't necessary; maybe he sees it as antagonistic and demeaning to his technical craft. Along comes Mr. Farmer, and, instead of showing Mr. Baker the farm and explaining how the food gets to the store and all that goes into farming, or how farming, far from demeaning baking's craft, complements it and how each might inform the other, Mr. Farmer enrolls in the community vocational cooking class then chooses to argue with Mr. Baker about cooking. Of course Mr. Baker easily out-cooks and out-classes Mr. Farmer, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a farm. All it means is that Mr. Farmer was either stupid or ashamed of his profession. And Mr. Baker should know better than making anything more of it. The arguments from either side are pointless, although both sides sell books and provide different diversions to their constituencies with their particular needs. Frankly, it would be more efficient, and far more entertaining, if Mr. Baker and Mr. Farmer went to a party supply store and rented some inflatable sumo costumes and had at it. As Einstein said, God doesn't play at dice, and, as Mr. Farmer should have said, good cooking is all about not getting in the way of good produce. This pop science vs. pop religion 'debate' often raises the question of how God could allow suffering, but rarely says anything meaningful. Perhaps its more clearly expressed elsewhere with an image. One recent children's'-book-turned-movie, sort of an anti-CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, shows God as a weak old man. Hes impotent, crouched and doubled over, hard of hearing, out of touch and pathetic. We were wrong for thinking he's there, or if he is there, wrong to think that he could do anything about suffering. At least it explains suffering. There are obvious alternatives. Maybe God is a figment of our collective imagination, a deep-seated archetype or image of a father figure that we slap upon the cosmos in a vain attempt to explain our circumstance and create meaning. Of course, that sort of begs the question. From where does this idea come in the first place? Why do we have this deep-seated image and such a need to project it? The wise king, the sage with the beard, the wizard, all the stuff of fairy tales, longing for a Norman Rockwell inspired pipe-smoking Ward Cleaver, for Gandalf. And why do we most often wish for this image, this archetype, this person when we're suffering? When all else is lost, when we're at the end of our rope without a prayer, a hope or a chance, when there's nothing else we can do on our own, why is it precisely then that regardless of our 'beliefs' we call out for help, from someone, from anyone. It's as if that
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prick of pain, when deep and sharp enough, triggers an innate, a primal, and all-too-familiar reflex to turn away from ourselves to someone else, to raise our eyes up to this haunting but imaginary figure. Wonder why that is. Sometimes this crying out takes a different form. When wounded, when torqued and pissed, we lash out and rage, at friends, family and anyone walking down the street. But mostly at Him. You know who I mean. Doesn't matter what I say I believe. Before I have a chance for my Zen calming techniques or my rational, material, evidence-based filter to kick in, I cry out in rage and accusation. When my baby's dying, when I'm bleeding and it won't stop, when I've been through chemo and it hasn't worked and I'm out of options and I know I will die, when I'm low and delving lower, I know exactly who is to blame, and its sure as hell not me. What's going on? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why me? Either way, its the same deep-seated projection, the same One to whom I either call out and beg or cry out and curse. Oh, right. Not you. You don't need that crutch. Left all that nonsense at the door of liberal arts college. Read that book, the one with the stature holding up the globe, what was its name? Something about an architect or the like. Right, right. But go spend some time in an intensive care unit at a hospital. Maybe you yourself have made it to the top of the pyramid, self-actualized and all that. But why do all the others lying in those uncomfortable 'adjustable' beds with bedpans nearby either pray to or curse this figment of their imagination, this shadow puppet that they universally shine upon the heavens? Why so often, especially when suffering and in pain? Okay, so you have a couple of options when it comes to God and suffering. There's the impotent old man cowering in the corner. And of course there's the cosmic shadow puppet that, one way or another, we all seem to project when we hurt. But there's still another option. Maybe God just doesn't care. Maybe he's a watchmaker who made a clock, wound it up and has let it go, his attention more drawn to the rerun of Gilligans Island playing on a TV in the corner. Not unreasonable. After all this is the God of your American founding fathers. He's a God who's got other things to do. And who are you again? Cosmic creator with infinite power interested in one of the billions of grains of sand on the sea? Knows the number of hairs on your head? Right. Seems like the height of narcissism, so obvious even a self-obsessed narcissist could catch it. This is a neutral, disinterested God. Hes not necessarily evil, but, as philosophers would say, he's beyond those categories. (Well the German philosophers would say it with big and impressive words, the French ones
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wouldn't care.) That doesn't mean you need to do the Aleister Crowley thing and sacrifice chickens or replay Ozzy Osbourne's bat-munching antics on YouTube in the service of the outright Satanic. Besides, that shtick seems to presuppose the whole Christian God thing in the first place. And the blood sacrifices get messy, tough to get out of your clothes even with OxiClean. And isn't Osbourne a talk show host now? None of this is new and more savant folks have explained it better. There's suffering in the world. Either God isn't all-powerful or he isn't merciful. And if he's neither, why call him God? A slick little formula the medieval churchmen wrestled with, but it really came to life when the clock struck Modernity in Europe -- that thing they call the Enlightenment, dispelling all or dusty beliefs from the Dark Ages and before. One of the more famous rock stars (back then they were called philosophers and had groupies and trashed hotel rooms) gave us a doosey of an image. He told a story of a dim and dusty churchman out on a walk with to his modern urbanite (think Starbucks customer of the day), explaining how God is both all powerful and all good and has created the best of all possible of worlds. The best world there could ever possibly be. The kicker is that they have the conversation walking through the streets after a plague or the like, stepping over dead bodies all the way, bodies that litter the streets like wind-strewn trash and merit only a minor littering ticket in this perfect world. Of course you could swap in machete-wielding natives bent on tribal genocide or even that early alarm clock. The question is the same. How, exactly, is this the best, the very best, of all possible worlds? Anyone who thinks so betrays himself as a fool denying the obvious, stepping over bodies while pretending that they dont matter or arent there. Suffering as an accusation against God, and a proof of his malevolence or his non-existence, isnt just the stuff of dusty old books or study notes from undergrad philosophy. The sentiment's well established and pops up frequently. Recent British movie, award-winning and with a pop fan base, has the lead character recant the same formula: Either God's not all powerful, or not merciful, or neither, in any case why should I call him a God? The lead character then goes on to launch his own campaign to deal out justice for the death of his sister, taking matters into his own hands and acting as the agent of, or rather in place of, this impotent or uncaring God, doing his job for him. Can kind of understand it. Noble even. Of course it turns out that the character is a psychotic murderer escaped from an asylum and bent on gunning down his father, but I don't want to spoil the ending for you. Note that its that same darn father figure who has failed us again, this
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time with the hero taking his place and taking him down, meeting out justice and creating a better world. Hmm. Common theme. Told you even I could do a better job if I were God. And I'm not even a psycho killer. But if even a psychotic killer can figure it out and wants to do a better job, then it must be pretty obvious. Couldn't be that tough. Id come up with something like Three-Point plan for a politicians sound bite. 1. Stop suffering (and death too, that's right out the window). 2. Give everybody what they want (hmm, that might get dicey, but I'd figure it out). 3. Sit back and enjoy the bliss. The problem, of course, is that I'm not God. And, unfortunately, he doesn't have to campaign to keep his position (that whole King thing as an unelected job for life). And in the words of an iconic Punk band, ironically called Bad Religion, he didn't even bother to consult me when he created the universe. And despite my attraction to the various options and the general sense they would seem to make, I get the general impression that he's not old and impotent, or a Sadist messing with us like a kid burning ants with a magnifying glass. And call it crazy or ego gone awry, but I do think that he knows what's going on, even with little old me, and even when I suffer. And it might be my morality gone awry but I tend to think God, by definition, likes good and hates evil, chalk it up to cosmic projection or parochial indoctrination. But here's the thing about that belief. There's this good God who can prevent suffering. But I spent the night watching my baby. He has severe brain damage and can't swallow. We do an hourly protocol to prevent him from drowning in his own saliva. We comfort him. We read Christian scripture. God is in control. God loves us. Don't be afraid. Be comforted. But nothing changes. Come dawn, he begins to suffocate. It's an effect of the brain damage. There's nothing we, or the doctors can do. He shrieks, he gasps. He tries to cry but can't make sounds. He turns blue, his veins spider web. He convulses. We give him oxygen and massage him as the doctors and nurse have showed us. But as they've told us there's nothing more we can do and this is most likely the end. Then, when his monitor shows his vitals flat-lined and we're all but sure he's gone, he convulses again. He gasps and begins to breathe, slowly ramping back up to regular-ish breaths between the convulsions and trembling. This wasn't it. Not his death yet. But next time it may be. Or maybe it will go on for years. So talk to me about this good God who can prevent suffering. Explain how this is best, the very best, of all possible worlds. Speak your fancy philosophy and bring out your dusty religious books. And read your words proclaiming comfort. Do not fear. We're not walking over dead bodies in the streets. It's worse. Those bodies are our
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loved ones and we will soon join them.

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Chapter Three 30 Days We stay through the night, taking turns to run back home and get supplies. Backpack with clothes, food, books, bible, laptop. Somewhere along the way a call to Melanie's folks. During the first day of the cooling treatment Ezra has very little brain activity, but it can develop later. By the second day there is some brain activity. But the prognosis still runs the gamut: most likely damage, how severe is not known. We're told they'll do an MRI after he comes of the cooling and that will give us some answers. Ezra remains cool, blue, and inactive. Wires on his head. IVs piercing each wrist. Tubes down his through and a ventilator covering his face. We begin to get into the system. The NICU copies our photo IDs, we get a parking pass and so on. Checking in with the NICU reception. Scrubbing down, wearing gowns and entering the sanctity of the inner NICU to sit by his crib. Sitting by his crib, we talk to him. We read to him. We tell him that we're happy he's here. That he's doing a good job. That we will take care of him. We tell him about his baptism, how he has a heavenly father who is taking care of him and how he's united with Christ's living, dying and rising again. We read scripture to him and sing to him. We learn to navigate our way down to the hospital's McDonalds and how best to move from the outer NICU waiting room, a scene straight from Jerry Springer, to the inner NICU. In the waiting room there are families and visitors of the other children in the NICU. Trappings of families who have been here for a while lay strewn about. The families often work in shifts, routines with the mother during the day, the father at night. We exchange quiet greetings the other parents. They look at us and know before we do. We will be here for a while. We talk to the different people in the waiting room. One EMT is there for his granddaughter. He explains how children are resilient, how the cooling therapy works; how he's seen children recover. He preaches, never, ever give up. His granddaughter makes a recovery and is soon moved from the NICU to another unit and he is gone.

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We begin our research. Both of us work in healthcare and technology and so we start to do the things we know. We sift the internet, discovering as much information as we can. Official resources, communities of parents in similar situations and their stories and advice and various new therapies. One theme echoes throughout it all. You are the best advocate for your child and will become the expert guiding their treatment, finding resources often outside the common knowledge of your immediate medical community. We become familiar with HIE (Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy) and find different treatments, from hyperbaric to VitalStim, when a child can use them, windows of opportunity, clinical results. These arent available in Louisville but are in Cincinnati and Indianapolis, so we start discovering where and how we might access them. We meet with Rev. Lange. He mercifully avoids small talk and instead offers scripture and communion. How can he and the church members help? He can continue administering communion and they can pray. If people want, they can come and read to Ezra especially in the times when we arent staying with him and or when we are with him but are sleeping next to him. Josh is still sick, goes to the doctor, is diagnosed with bronchitis and complications and receives treatments; he should be fine in a few days. Melanie's parents come and see Ezra and stay with us, watching Lydia. We see Lydia as much as we can, but often in short bursts. Melanie is with Ezra now mostly during the day and Josh at night. We see Lydia in between and when we're at home getting a little rest. She loves her grandparents, but she knows something is going on and shes rattled. She knows because of the irregular schedule that keeps us from spending carefree time with her, but mostly from the tone and feeling. And she cries and howls when we must leave her. Everyone is effected, Ezra, his parents, his sibling, his extended family, his church. Suffering is communal, a shared experience. We are sad, but more traumatized then grief-stricken. We do not know what will happen or exactly what we are to suffer. But we are supposed to receive some answers from the doctors tomorrow. C - Suffering and the Christian God Who is the Christian God anyway? He must be pretty well known and understood. The last Gallup poll said 158% of Americans professed to be Christian. Im not particularly adept at math, but that seems like a lot. Not to mention theres a Christian
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church on every corner, Christian YouTube, Christian decals on four out of every five cars and Christian pharmacies stocking Christian hemorrhoid cream. And plenty of Christian books on death. Lets just cut to the chase. This popular version of Christianity is unbearable and even more so in the midst of profound suffering. It seems obsessed with triteisms, God has a plan, Trust your Lord and Savior. The popular, well-known version of Christianity couldnt swat a fly, let alone respond to the most fundamental realities of pain and suffering, horror and despair, and ultimately death. Death after a mere 32 days of life. Cutting to the chase, heres the main themes, in bullet points no less: The Curse - If I have to make an argument, have to convince you that this world is f-ed up then please stop reading here. This place is a train wreck. And each of us is an MVP in this mess, contributing heartily in our own special and disturbing ways. The Promise - God promises to send the seed of a woman which is a poetic way of saying that he will send a man, to redeem, to restore, to recreate this mess. The rest of Scripture tells the story of God working through human history, ordinary human means to bring about the crescendo, when this seed of a woman arrives. The characters, the plots, the signs and symbols, the go here and dont go there, the do this and dont do that, are all in anticipation of the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. Suffering on its Ear - But contrary to humanitys desire, Christ will not be a king of this world, will not set the politics of this earth aright, but will be a king of kings, not simply of this world, this time and place, but of all worlds. So, low and behold, here comes this Christ. He is simultaneously God and man although you wouldnt know it. He comes as an infant, as all other humans, born on a road trip, born in a barn, raised in Galilee the backwater of backwaters. Rest of his life follows the same pattern. So on and so forth. All this, the story of the Suffering Servant -- God himself will suffer to redeem his fallen creation and turn suffering on its ear -- to bring unimaginable good out of unspeakable evil. We see it clearly with Christs suffering, same holds true for yours.

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The Great Exchange - This long-awaited promised restoration, making of things right, of redeeming this f-upery, comes about through the suffering of God himself. The cross will be the site for this great exchange. On one side of it, lays you and your sins. Yes, what you do. The things you actually think, say, and do. And the things you dont think, dont say, and dont do. But moreover, who you are. You, a member of the fallen human race, a child of Adam and Eve. All of this Christ takes onto himself as a substitute and covers with it his blood as the sacrifice. Christs payment for your sin as its sacrifice on the cross is just one side of this double exchange. The other side, less often noticed but just as important, is Christ delivering his perfect merits to you and God crediting them to you. All those years without a single imperfect thought, word or deed, those decades loving God and neighbor with every thought, word and deed, all that credited to you just as if you had kept the law perfectly. Christ doesnt just wipe the slate clean, but credits his perfection to your account. The cross as only the site of the blood payment for your sin is too small a thing. It also marks the spot where you are credited with perfection. Back to the other half Christ will not only keep the burden in your place but will suffer the penalty of you failing to keep it, likewise in your place, on the cross. Here is the best expression of loving-kindness to a thousand generations. Here ends, completed and fulfilled, the need for blood sacrifice and the long history of blood covering the stains of the people. Now What? Your Turn - Theres a great part of Scripture that talks about God not even sparing his only son on your behalf. Its usually spoken of in the context of comfort -- what a loving God, that he would go to the deepest expressions of sacrifice on your behalf. But theres a flip side. God did not spare his only son. The prayers of the son, to remove this cup, went unanswered, and at last the son cries out, my god, my god, why have you forsaken me. If God allowed this road of suffering for his own dear son, what do you think is in store for you? Cotton candy and daisies? I sincerely hope so but probably not. If you are a professor of this faith, if this God is your God, then cherish dearly all the benefits, but expect to be united with him in suffering as well. Emmanuel & Hiddenness - Christ's name, the thing that defines who he is and what he came to do, is Emmanuel, God with us. He's God with us because he cares, and far from just watching he participates. And not only does he participate; he suffers, with us, for us. God walks in the cool of the garden, through the dirt of the desert sands, hovers in glory in
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a tents made of skins, then the same hovering in the flesh as he dealt with us in Christ. Emmanuel is the Suffering Servant, who knows our pain, has himself experienced our abandonment and despair. But it will not feel that way, at least not sometimes, and maybe not even in the worst of times. Both Emmanuel and hidden at the same time. Both absolutely true, and opposed, at same time. Abandoned but accompanied. We'll feel forsaken but God really is there, hidden. And in hiding himself he reveals what he's like and what's he's done for us. This makes tension. The intellectual profession of the certainty an objective, concrete, unshakable reality; smack in face of an experience that feels exactly the opposite, one of utter and absolute despair and the feeling of certain abandonment. This tension echoes down through the millennia, from David to Christ to us. We call out to God and hold him to his promises, expressing faith and trust, but do so as complaint, pointing out how we feel just as if he doesnt exist, or doesnt care. In the midst of squarely feeling pain and abandonment, God calls us to profess faith that he is there, in control and orchestrating all for his glory and our good, not just as an intellectual proposition but with a personal trust that extends to the affective and emotions, to the whole person: whole hog, all in. Lord, to whom else shall we go? The Mud, the Blood, and the Beer - This world is both a slice of heaven and a serving of hell. It still maintains the glories of its creator and yet everything is fallen, tainted, difficult. It is into this we are called to be in the world, but of it. In the world; not secluded, not cloistered. On the contrary, participating, using our talents to create good things, nurturing our families, helping our neighbor, getting our hands dirty. But not of it; our hope is not here. What we hope for -- things being set right, peace, rest, freedom from the tyranny of death, are not to be found in this life but the next. And so we trudge along. We are thankful and heartily enjoy the good things family, friends, meaningful work, laughter (albeit nervous laughter) at the way our 2 year old acts just like Josh, satisfaction that comes from growing a garden, the enjoyment from listening to embarrassing music and dancing with Lydia like were in a bad discothque. And we do everything we can to avoid it, but we gird up, because we know suffering is coming, coming for us. Some days more and some less and we enjoy those days as much as we possibly can. And during those days we pray for courage and trust despite it all.

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Why? - But why this way? I dont know. Mysterious and tough to fathom. The promise we do have is this: in some way our sufferings will work for our good and Gods glory. We are promised that our suffering is not in vain, that it is not meaningless, that it is not random. Quite to the contrary, we have a small and carefully orchestrated role in the grand story of the cosmos. And all the while, each day we trudge along in the mud, blood, and beer, God works out the fulfillment of his purposes through these very ordinary means. Our pain is real and we are keenly aware that things are askew, the order is broken. And we long for the day when it will be set right and our suffering will cease. But for now we wait, we endure, and despite what we may feel, we trust. Okay, so you maybe dont believe in any of this. Thats fine. Treat this as a mental exercise. Suspend your disbelief for the next 100 pages, and suppose you were us, believing in what weve just described and staking your life on it. How, exactly, would you view your own suffering and the death of your infant son? What could suffering possibly mean and how could you possibly react? Admittedly, it took a while to get here (thanks for still reading). But it was necessary to get the full force of the question.

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Chapter Four 28 Days Thursday morning at 6 am has us begin to take Ezra off the cooling protocol. The doctors begin the warming procedure, bringing his core body temperature back up to a normal range. We're warned that often during the warming there's seizure activity. But Ezra responds well and this doesn't seem to be the case. The process is relatively uneventful and by noon he's warmed. He's quiet, he moves a little, slowly. But hes able to interact a bit, he knows we're there. Off the cooling and onto the MRI for an assessment of the brain damage. We can't get the MRI scheduled until late afternoon and it won't be interpreted until Friday morning. Answers delayed. Will he be able to walk, to move, to speak, to communicate at all, to think? We had expected to know today but it will be another day, at least, of insufferable waiting. Friday morning we are both present as the doctors do the rounds. A doctor, old, white and male, with an utter lack of bedside manner, or even humanity, bluntly puts out that what the MRI reveals is horrible. Ezra has massive brain injury. If he lives at all it will be under severely impaired conditions. The neurologist will be around later to explain the details. And here the blow hits. This is crazy, insane, it cannot be. For the first time, in a meaningful way, we know that this will be suffering, and suffering of a particular degree and sort. It will not be a rapid recovery, or something approaching a full recovery as we had hoped, as we were told frequently happens. Rather, it will be the worst of all the options stretched out before us. It's to be pain and suffering; for him, for us. We're horrified. Here, after we take leave of the inhumane hand of our clinical care, we break. But not so much simple wailing and sobbing. At the same time, we are in shock. More importantly, we are in battle. This is no time for undue grief. We need to figure out what we can do, how we can care for him. We meet with the neurologist, who is the complete antithesis of the earlier doctor. A woman, kind and compassionate, she is some months pregnant herself. She explains that although everything the other doctor earlier had said is true, there is more to the story. They judge brain injury on a scale of 1-3 with 3 being the worst. Ezra is in between a 2 and a 3. He has injury across his brain, which means wide-scale impact. There is some
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injury to the brain stem, which controls essential functions like breathing and heart rate. But the injuries are a little unusual, a mixed bag. Its not uniform damage which is more clearly predictable. And again, the neurologist reminds us that even with results like these she's seen kids snap back in unexpected ways. The nurse practitioner at her side explains that Ezra will need various therapies: speech, occupational, and motor. His brain damage will mostly likely lead to Cerebral Palsy (CP). His muscles right now are malformed and weak but they will soon over-tighten and need therapy to relax. Various therapists will be along to begin. We see Rev. Lange and explain the situation. Again, a humane and meaningful response. We are not alone. This is bad and horrific, but we still believe in a God in control of the universe, and it is his hands in which Ezra now lies. We talk about the specifics, the diagnosis, the prognosis and what likely lies ahead. Scripture, communion, prayer. The scripture readings are almost more than we can bear; such beauty and power. Fierce admission that we are in the face of chaos and yet still under God's control. We need to hear this, but read by someone else it is painfully beautiful. Rev. Lange asks what he can do, the answer is more of all of this as we continue along. Later we begin to work through all this in our heads. God has given us this baby and the details of how we arrived at this point are irrelevant. This is the child God has given us. He is a wonderful gift. It is our responsibility is to take care of him to the best of our ability. We begin to get comfortable with the idea that Ezra will be severely disabled. This will be okay. We will take care of him. Josh had taught special/exceptional education in an elementary school previously. Although that was not for severely but only mildly or moderately disabled children, we have a sense of what this means. We have the idea of moving to a farm, starting a school or program for kids with special needs; therapies with grass and sunshine and animals. We've moved at the drop of a hat, started and sold businesses and helped build non-profits so it's not idle talk and we can see it before us fairly clearly. This will be our life. We will take care of Ezra, make his life as comfortable and fulfilled as we possibly can, and in some way, turn this into something good, a way to help others like him. Some live to build reputations in academia, others to gain wealth and security in corporate culture, still others to build value and meaning in entrepreneurial start-ups. We've played with all of those and found them all less fulfilling than their promises. Our lives will be in taking care of Ezra and helping others take care of their similar children will be our
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calling. There are far less noble vocations with far less meaning. We can do this. We begin to get into a schedule. Melanie stays with Ezra by day, Josh by night. People from church occasionally drop by and read to him. Friends such as Jennifer and Susan and others in their networks come by as well. We make sure that Jennifer knows that she's done a good job, that this is not her fault. She hears us but we need to make sure that she understands; we need to comfort. The same things with various members of the church. It's nice they come by, but often us comforting them as they come unglued and look to us for signals and reaction. At this point we've already become fairly resolute. God, we don't know why this happened, and it is a certain evil. But you have given us a child to take care of, and a beautiful, wonderful one at that. And we will do so without cursing you or ourselves. There is no room for pity now; we must take care of Ezra. And as for the cosmic reasons behind these so tangible events, well those reasons are hidden. And in spite of a lack of explanation, we will trust. What other choice do we really have? We will trust defiantly, what hell may come. We bring in a library of books, and music playing from a laptop or MP3 player through a little speaker in Ezras crib. We have a balloon, and tape up pictures of family all around his crib. Melanie sings him hymns. The neurologist, hearing, smiles and says it's beautiful and Ezra smiles at them both. The neurologist sees it and wonders that he can interact like this. We have a new lead doctor, a young woman, humane and compassionate. There is a team of therapists who visit every few days as well. Each nurse in the inner NICU is responsible for just a few children and so we see them regularly and know them. One had adopted a child like Ezra into her family and she provides good help. Lydia was breast fed but now Melanie must learn to use a pump. With Ezra, this is more complicated than it sounds and entails leaving him, exiting the inner sanctum of the NICU and going to a dedicated pumping room nearby, sterilizing and the like, and then trying to gain readmission to the inner sanctum. Back in the NICU, the milk is passed to the nursing staff and kept in a repository, rotated into the IV queue. Balancing all this while ensuring Melanie eats (food not allowed in the inner sanctum) just days after birth and trauma for baby and mama, makes for a difficult time. Perhaps there's just as much trauma in trying got learn how to use that pumping machine and its Rubiks Cube of plastic parts. Soon Ezra should come off the ventilator. If all goes well he'll begin to breathe on his own. This is the next step and will determine whether he

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will be able to swallow or to eat. We should know in the next couple of days. D - Suffering and the Gospel When it comes to God and salvation, trying to do your best and let God do the rest, doesn't work. At least it doesnt work for me. If Im honest, I never really try that hard. Even when I think Im trying, Im really not. Not really. I'm mean. Maybe Im not as bad as the machete-wielding genocides or Hitler, or even that real jackass down the street. Not as bad as all the others who clearly create suffering for others. At least I like to think so. Thats pretty obvious, right? Cough, right? Hello? Actively being good? We'll, frankly it is tough work. Its rolling a boulder up a hill tough. I certainly don't do what I should. But when it comes to all the stuff that I shouldnt do, well those are exactly the things that I do, gleefully. If I'm nice to someone, it's usually because I like them, or they've been nice to me. Rarely, do I go out of my way for someone I don't know, much less frequently if I hate them. And if some planets are aligned and I actually do something kind, well then, look at me and give me my gold star. The satisfaction and self-worth I gain from that momentary lapse into goodness is its own reward. Shouldn't I get an Oscar; perhaps a Noble Peace prize or humanitarian award? But watch out if the planets aren't aligned or just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Cut me off without using a turn signal and it'll be Armageddon. (I have elaborate plans about how to make a specialized horn that curses so loud its clear even on the freeway, or a set of lights that you can put on your car to show your offender a large, animated, hand gesture that clearly expresses your displeasure. Exquisite, detailed product plans, technical designs and an elaborate business model. I have to admit, Ive never given the same thought to a device that would share warm and fuzzy pleasantries with other drivers.) In any case, if ever can refrain from such reactions, even on occasion, well then I consider that a great work, likewise worthy of special notice. One problem with all this is that I know that when I'm trying to do good things, I'm not doing them for their own sake. They are not good actions flowing out of a good person. Rather, they're means to an end. My good works are an effort to obtain the goodies in a cosmic candy machine. Tasks undertaken for their rewards arent good in their own right, nor the moral character of the person participating in that economy. Even if
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these works were good, well, they're not enough. I don't do well. Maybe I do better than some and worse than others, but if Im being honest, I dont do well on the whole, or at least not as well as I know I should. One of the old, bald, bearded guys with thick glasses (i.e. old-school Lutheran theologian) used to say when we feel that we are at our holiest, well its precisely at that moment when we are in the greatest danger. Its then that we have enough self satisfaction to succumb to the insane temptation to think we're actually doing something more than putting our finger in the cracking damn, than scooping out a bucket of water in the tipping Titanic, than slowing down the boulders inevitable roll to the base of the mountain. On the other hand, it's precisely in some of my 'holier' moments that I get a glimpse of exactly how unholy I am. Its sort of like walking closer to a street light while the extent of the mud covering my cloths becomes clearer. Hmm, its not just a barely noticeable spot that could pass at a cocktail party with a little dab from club soda. They're soaked, crusted, caked and dripping. Wonder how I could have missed that? Wow, that, uh, doesn't smell like mud. Oh frick. But these are all my own standards, or those that my conscience picks up in my clearer moments. Of course, I'm not God. His standards are higher and he notices more. Hes more comprehensive and more exacting. Its something about having perfect Holiness, the kind that by nature can't tolerate sin or its stain or stench. It's an attribute grounded in his being that prevents him from overlooking it. And, going back to that whole what it means to be God thing, far from the weak old man that we really wish he were, he's omnipotent and holy. Imagine a blazing fire that must burn anything short of divine perfection, one that sees everything, knows everything. Sees you; knows who you really are. Double frick. But surely God understands that humans can't be perfect. After all he created us, spent some time down here, even was a human, right? Yeah, that's what fallen humans would like or would expect. But it's not what happened. Far from being a kinder, gentler, blond-haired, blue-eyed softy; that person, that God-Man, is himself just as stern as the blazing fire. Indeed its his zealousness that helped him be so perfect while on earth, perfect in our place, keeping the law for us, pleading his complete perfection in our stead and his scarification in our place. Far from coming to earth to get a taste of how tough it really is and then pleading with the Father to ease up on us, you know just ask them to do their best. Christ is a different sort of person, had a different plan, and performed a different mission with very different results.

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Sure he has children sit on his lap. But he also weaves a whip and snaps and slashes at the flesh of those polluting the temple, driving them out in a cloud of dust and a cacophony of shrieking howls. Lots of calling down woe. Lots of promises of weeping and gnashing of teeth in the fire to come. Its tough to reconcile this person with the blond-haired, blueeyed, rosy figure on the ceramic Hummel plate. When speaking directly to this Law stuff, He's more pointed. I didnt come to abolish the Law; every i will remain dotted and t will remain crossed; dont think about erasing a mark or softening a stroke. If anything, Christ raises the bar. On one hand it doesn't make any difference. I can't pole vault so whether I'm trying to qualify for a high school, collegiate or Olympic team, it doesn't really matter. And in some sense now it's clear. Christ says be perfect. Just as perfect as your heavenly father; you know, that great blazing fire of holiness himself, the one whose very nature prevents even the slight tolerance of a trace of stain or sin. So, be perfect, just as God himself is perfect. This is the same God who punishes those who break his law down to the generations, cursing their children's, children's, children's children and the same God who set up blood sacrifices to cover the sins of his people. Blood on the door posts of those houses the angel of death would pass over. They had to literally slit the flesh of animals, splattering their blood against God's presence to cover over this sin. Blood sacrifice coating our wickedness allowed us, temporarily, to stand before this holy God. Christ makes sure that we're entirely clear that hes not waiving the law or giving us a hall pass. He also lets us know that God is the guy who's judging us and its his measure of perfection we must obtain. Giving it the old college try and tossing out the chardonnay isn't going to cut it. And its not like Christ just made a mistake or let this slip out to a few folks on the side in an offhanded dinner conversation. This is the subject of his sermon on the mount, a high point in his career where he's out in public, with crowds around begging him to clarify and interpret these issues. Christ ups the ante one more time. Previously you heard it said don't murder, now I tell you don't think a hateful thought. Previously don't commit adultery or steal; now don't even think the thought. Otherwise it's better to cut out your eye or chop off your hand than to have your whole body thrown into the blazing fire of punishment for not perfectly meeting this divine standard. But at the same time, he delivers a very different message, one in complete opposition and utterly contradictory at first glance. Come to me
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all you who are worn and weary, ragged and down trodden, those of you who want to give up. Christ says easy burden, light yoke. And its not just him, he points to the other, hidden, side of the Father. That same Father who punishes the sinners, children's, children's children, is also the same guy who shows loving-kindness, divine favor, to those his faithful, those who keep his law, and to their children for a thousand generations (i.e. big, big number). Heres the thing, the reconciliation. The Law is crushing. Even the best of us cant keep the law, cant obtain and execute divine perfection. At least not me. But Christ himself does it for us, making the burden light. He keeps the law, with divine perfection and its exacting standards. It is in that same exchange he lays it out. I did not come to abolish the law, but I came to fulfill it. Didn't come to make it easier to keep? Frick. Oh, wait, you're actually going to fulfill it yourself? Holy frick! Good news, good news. No wonder why it's an easy burden and a light yoke if you're the one doing the work. Oh that's right, youre doing the pulling and the plowing, it's your yoke. Of course theres still the matter of payment for the sins themselves. Even if Christ has kept the law in your place, youve broken it and those consequences need to be paid for. That happens on the cross, but thats the other half, the flip side of all this. Christ keeping the law for you is the first part, and that is the main theme of his preaching and the means to understand the difficulties and apparent contradictions in what hes talking about. Christ says, hey, it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man, or anyone else for that matter, to enter the kingdom of heaven and stand in the presence of this perfectionrequiring God. The disciplines cry out: wait! What the frick? Who then can be saved? We're all lost! Christ replies, it's impossible with humans but all things are possible with God. God himself, in the person and through the work of Christ, will keep the law. He will both act and think perfectly and earn the merits necessary to stand, permanently, before this holy God. For years, decades, Christ will live and labor under a heavy yoke. For years, he will dwell in the dust and the mud and the mundane. At each second of every day, he will never stumble, in what he thinks, what he says, in what he does. God will proclaim that he accepts this perfection, even at that moment when Christ begins his public ministry and rises from the waters of his baptism in the Jordan River. There God himself appears proclaiming out loud for all to hear, this is my son, in whom I'm well pleased. He has succeeded in keeping the law, on your behalf. But this is just the beginning.

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Back to the other half Christ will not only keep the burden in your place but will suffer the penalty of you failing to keep it, likewise in your place, on the cross. Here is the best expression of loving-kindness to a thousand generations. Here ends, completed and fulfilled, the need for blood sacrifice and the long history of blood covering the stains of the people. This cross will be the site for this double exchange. On one side of it, lays you and your sins. Yes, what you do. The things you actually think, say, and do. And the things you dont think, dont say, and dont do. But moreover, who you are. You, a member of the fallen human race, a child of Adam and Eve. All of this Christ takes onto himself as a substitute and covers with his blood as the sacrifice. Christs payment for your sin as its sacrifice on the cross is just one side of this double exchange. The other side, less often noticed but just as important is Christ delivering his perfect merits to you and God crediting them to you. All those years without a single imperfect thought, word or deed, those decades loving God and neighbor with every thought, word and deed, all that credited to you just as if you had kept the law perfectly. Christ doesnt just wipe the slate clean, but credits his merits to your account. The cross as only the site of the blood payment for your sin is too small a thing. It also marks the spot where you are credited with perfection. It may be too much to believe, too incredible, but both sides of the coin are necessary. One without the other is not salvation, but merely a chance at salvation. A chance at salvation? Grab your bootstraps I guess, and good luck. This Christian salvation is a great two-way exchange. Christ earns an A and the reward. You earn an F and the consequence. He suffers your consequence, while you receive his reward. The first part of your exchange is clear. He bears your sins and the consequences in a public execution with signs for all to see. Rocks burst open; heavens go dark; all obvious enough so that even these Romans, pagans occupying the Jewish holy land, profess the death of God as a self-determined sacrifice. The second part of the exchange becomes evident later, after days of despair and abandonment by those who had believed. Again the rocks shook and rolled as Christ comes back to life from the dead. A real physical body, resurrected as evidence that this perfect God has accepted not only Christs sacrifice for you but also transferred Christs merit to you. This double exchange is known as Justification. Justification answers the question: How is a sinner acceptable in the sight of a holy God? It answers, that no sinner can stand present before God. Only Christs perfect merits are acceptable. You can stand in front of a holy God only having Christs blood sacrifice having washed away your sin and only with
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his perfect merits covering you. Only when clothed with the robes of Christs perfection may you enter the presence of the holy fire and live. Only when standing behind the shadow of the cross can you withstand, much less dwell within, and even enjoy, God and his glory and holiness. Lets use a couple of images to explain what justification is and as importantly what its not. The first image is a beaker. Your soul is like glass container with little marks on it. Do well and your soul is filled with a neon purple substance: grace. Do enough good and your level rises past a magic mark at which point you are justified, saved, acceptable in the sight of a holy God. But do evil and the beaker leaks a little from the bottom. The purple fluid goes up and down depending on your actions and your participation in ecclesiastical, sacramental and penitential economies. In this system, the church dispenses the fluid from a large reservoir. If you die when the fluid is above the magic mark of justification on your beaker, then you go to heaven. If the level is too low, then its hell, and if the level is somewhere in between the two marks then purgatory. You don't know where the mark is set, and knowing that would be bad as you'd stop trying. The fluid is injected into your soul as with a syringe; it is Justification by infusion, a process, ongoing. Both evangelicals and Roman Catholics have the same basic system although Roman Catholics have fancier Latin names for the glassware and hydraulics process. Essentially, these are the mechanics that support the Gospel of do the best you can, do your best and be better than the rest and do your best and let God do the rest gospel. The other image is a gavel. This system is all about the hammer that a judge bangs down when declaring a verdict. This system doesnt take place in a lab but a court room. This system is forensic, as in legal like the legal evidence in a forensic investigation or case on CSI. God is the Cosmic Judge and bangs the hammer in a two-fold declaration: both not guilty and also perfectly worthy. You are not guilty on account of Christ paying the penalty for your infraction. You are also perfectly worthy on account of God crediting Christs perfection to you. This is the legal mechanism of the double exchange: the grade of A switched for F and the rewards switched for their consequences. This whole exchange presupposes, or rather explains, some things about yourself and this God as God uses this exchange to reveal himself in Christ. Why the God-Man? God to keep the law perfectly, to provide a sacrifice of infinite worth and to endure divine wrath. Man so that the sacrifice would count on behalf of humanity and the merits could be transferred to the humans therein. God to endure the divine punishment humanity deserves; man so that the sacrifice would be a legal substitute, culminating and terminating the train of blood sacrifices from animals.
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God emptied himself in the incarnation becoming fully human as the finite man carrying the infinite God. Christ, after the resurrection, retains his humanity for all eternity along with the body of human resurrection complete with the scars of the suffering and sacrifice. God took on humanity in Christ in order to perform two kinds of obedience: active and passive. On one hand, he actively keeps the law in its entirety on your behalf. On the other hand, he passively lays himself down as a sacrifice for you upon the cross. This sacrifice ends all the required blood sacrifices. All of the days, years, decades and centuries of blood splattering the alter, the physical location of God, and the smell of their burnt flesh temporarily appeasing of the holiness of God, all end on the cross. The screams, cries, mess and stick and stench of blood and death are now replaced, culminated, consummated as a human sacrifice of divinely infinite worth stops the ever-grinding cycle. This sacrificial Lamb of God had a death that resolved the physical divide between this sinful people and the holy God. Even the literal divide was destroyed as temple curtain that divided the people from Gods presence ripped apart at Christs death. The story and imagery of the Old Testament is largely one of foreshadowing this God-man. The blood sacrifices were miniature pictures that foreshadowed Christ. Likewise, the nation of Israel served as an image of the saving Christ to come. Israel failed to keep the Law and repeatedly suffered the consequences including exile and domination by pagan powers. Christ, as the new Israel, keeps the law on this peoples behalf and re-lives the defining episodes of Israels history, going down to Egypt and back up again. Christs keeping the law where Israel failed, will serve as the basis upon which God will graft the gentiles (i.e. the whole world) into this tree, the reason why Israel will serve as a light to the gentiles. Christ will not only be the new Israel, but he will serve in each of its defining offices. The offices of prophet, priest and king of Israel served as miniature pictures that showed the true prophet, priest and king to come. Christ would be the true great high priest, offering himself as a sacrifice for his peoples sins, paying for them completely, once and for all. Christ would be the true prophet, speaking the word of God, unmediated, and directly to his people: the message that both redeems and condemns. And Christ would be the true king. Not a political kingdom, but a religious and spiritual one. Not simply King of the Jews, but King of the Universe. The Old Testament imagined a Messiah, one who would deliver his people from bondage. The great surprise was that the Messiah, the anointed one who would save his people, was Yahweh himself. And his
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saving work was not political liberation and restoring Israel to earthly prominence. Rather, his saving work was spiritual liberation, defeating Satan and death. Other rich imagery, the basis of our human story-telling, is all rooted in the Christ figure. Christ as the hero, the champion. Christ is the knight who fights on our behalf and takes to the battlefield in our stead. Our fate depends entirely on his valor, chivalry and martial prowess. Christ is one who is vindicated, and vindicates us, through the ancient rite of the Ordeal. He is hero who journeys on a quest, who brings us treasure and the golden apples of eternal life. He sets the broken straight, he healing and restores and he executes justice at the end of a sword. He is the hidden hero of noble birth, unknown and unrecognizable, shrouded in rough peasants garb. He is dying and rising God. The Corn King. He is the Hero of a Thousand Faces. Hercules, Odysseus. Thor (without the silliness). Gandalf, Aragorn and Frodo together. Doctor Who, burning in a blaze at the center of the universe. These images pop up throughout humanity, whenever we wrestle with the great questions, whenever we try to tell a story about something meaningful. Just like how the image of father figure forces himself onto us, whether wise king of Freudian projection of the father, so too the Champion, Hero, Noble Sacrifice and Dying and Rising God flourish. Perhaps thats because we share the image of God. Perhaps its because we have a collective unconscious. Perhaps its because the structures of the universe and our reality are merely the contours of this narrative and its story echoes and reverberates throughout. Perhaps its not just because Christ redeems and charges these images with significance but because he actively relives, or recapitulates our foundational humanity, reliving the life of our first parent. Regardless, this Christian religion, with its demands of perfection, with its blood sacrifices, with its images reverberating throughout time and space and with its dusty desert God trudging through the sands while coordinating history to bring about this double justification, this religion is very different from the religion that is commonly understood or believed. We read Ezra the scriptures as he lay in his crib, first likely to live although severely brain damaged, then without a prognosis, then clearly suffering and dying. We shared the same images of God orchestrating history, showing us the heavenly courtroom, and championing our salvation by himself living in our place and sacrificing himself on the cross. We explained how God united us through this Word and through the Sacraments. We told him about how we baptized him in the Emergency Room the night he came back to life. We played these words set to music and chants. We prayed based on this belief system and
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invoking these promises, given to us by the creator of the universe. We did all these things for him, and for each other. And we trusted in this God. And yet, Ezra suffered. Ezra died. Likewise, we each will suffer. We each will die. So what does this mean? Wearing these glasses, what do we see when we look upon pain and fear and misery and toil, upon suffering and death?

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Chapter Five 26 Days We are in a routine. Melanie stays with Ezra throughout the day. A lunch packed with things quick to eat and easy to keep: Hummus, different salads, feta, tuna. Josh gets up in the middle of the night and checks in, his pneumonia gone. Leftovers are taken from the fridge; bad coffee is bought from the gas station from the late night clerk. The NICU therapists begin showing us how to perform one of the types of therapies that Ezra will need. We start with specific exercises and massages. Melanie is pumping milk and managing its logistics. Josh does the therapy with Ezra. It's good bonding time and Ezra reacts positively; he loves it although it wears him out. Slowly, we see Ezra make progress. He now has some range of motion and is able to grip a little. The NICU, in general, is a noisy place. Loud alarms constantly go off. Ezra has little ear-pads, given to him by a nurse, to block some of the sounds. We have music playing next to him. Bach, psalms, a children's catechism sung, lullaby music. We're becoming experts at reading the various machines: oxygen levels, heart rate and the like. More importantly, were starting to get a feel for when something is a routine alarm versus something serious. On Saturday Ezra is breathing over the ventilator. This means that he is able to breathe by himself. The doctors take him off the ventilator. This is a major step forward and means that he will be able to breathe on his own. Prayer answered. Taking Ezra off the ventilator also means that we can take out the tubes that has been shoved down his throat. Now well be able to if he can swallow and perhaps eventually eat on his own. But there is no sucking, no swallowing, and no gag reflex. This is bad. It means that he could choke and die at the drop of a hat and will need a feeding tube and frequent suctioning of his mouth to remove saliva. He might develop a gag reflex over the next couple of days; sometimes this happens. But as the days tick by it becomes clear that this will not be the case. He will most likely need a feeding tube for the rest of his life. There are, however, stories; information on line from parents in similar situation and some of their children eventually develop the ability to swallow and eat, sometimes as a result of the well known therapies that doctors have us doing, sometimes as a result of less well known therapies. Josh works some of the exercises into the nightly routine. Melanie finds a
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less well known therapy, electrodes on the throat that stimulate swallowing, that has been successful with infants in similar situations. This is frequently used with geriatric patients but relatively new for infants. Although it has good results, it has a window of opportunity during which it is most effective, generally the sooner the better. Were in that window and no one in Louisville does the therapy. Someone local did practice it but they went on maternity leave and will not be back. They do it in Cincinnati and Indianapolis and so Josh begins hunting down the people and finding options (once were out of NICU perhaps we could drive to somewhere regularly?). We had done an MRI that revealed brain damage but it was somewhat unusual and the doctors want to do a more thorough MRI that means leaving it on Ezra for 24 hours. We hope for better results, some good signs, but the results are basically the same as the first. Ezra is holding his own fairly well and making some progress. The IVs in his wrists had became swollen and infected and had to be reset, but hes progressed to where the doctors remove them and he's getting his nutrients through the feeding tube. On Monday he has stabilized and he's moved to the other wing of the NICU. It's still intensive care but slightly less intensive. This is good news. He continues to show signs of improvement: better eye coordination, more limb movement and more responsiveness in general. This, too, is very good. Now's that he's off the ventilator we start holding him skin-to-skin and he responds positively. We are hopeful. We begin to realize that we're not waiting on anything. Most likely, Ezra will be exactly like this for some time. We won't stay in the hospital for years waiting for him to regain his ability to swallow. Currently he has a feeding tube running down his throat. The doctors explain that since the swallow and gag reflexes arent developing, we should do a G-tube, a surgery that implants a tube directly into his stomach that connects to the feeding tube. This is a more stable long term solution that will allow us to leave. It will also remove the tubes down his throat, which will surely feel better, and it potentially paves the way for him to better navigate the swallowing reflexes should they develop. Surgery is always risky, especially with someone like Ezra, but now is the time and we schedule it. In the meantime, we've become experts as using the suction machine to remove his excess saliva. This requires inserting a tube even into his nose and down his throat. We also become quite skilled at operating all the hydraulics of the feeding tube apparatus with minimal eruptions. All this is more difficult than it may sound but after days of practice on the hour were taking over from the nurses. This coupled with the progress with
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the therapies such as the massages and exercises, allow us to turn our attention to getting him home. Home. With family, with some more routine. Home, away from the ever-present risk of infections and illness that routinely sweep through the NICU. Home, away from the incessant sirens and alarms of children destabilizing that unnerve both baby and family. We are on our way. Josh is now working the phones, trying to arrange the lesser known therapies for developing a swallowing reflex. We have the research; we know the companies that provides it to children like Ezra. They are just not in Louisville. We are trying to find the closest and considering driving or staying in Indy, Cincy or even Chicago. We even explore doing it ourselves, taking the training and purchasing the equipment. One problem is although the therapies have good results they are still relatively new and haven't made their way to Kentucky. The other problem is that the providers dont make much money from alternatives like this therapy. Irony. We work in the health care field on and know the reimbursement mechanics and models and this happens all the time; now it defines our situation. But the people at the company that provides the therapy equipment and training to doctors as well as the people at the national associations are personally helpful. Many didn't go into it to get rich but to help and they some have personal stories and family members in similar situations. There is one lead, the University of Louisville rehab center. They have infant therapies and they do this therapy, they just havent begun doing this therapy on infants. We'll continue to hunt this down. Wednesday brings a bad episode. Ezra stops breathing and turns blue. In the less intensive part of the NICU there are not clear lines of sight for the nurses. The nurses don't like it and the administration has been meaning to remodel for some time. As he turns blue, the alarms sound but no one comes. Even working in shifts, sometimes we are not at his side. On this occasion Melanie is, and she flies across the hall and grabs a nurse by the back of her shirt, dragging her over. They bag him, using a hand respirator so common in the ER. This happens a couple of times. They think he's aspirated milk or saliva; that is he's breathed something other than air causing a chemical pneumonia. This, in turn, causes a fever. 102.6 degrees. Now they perform every test imaginable and pump him with antibiotics. We're not sure if he will survive the day and are moved back into the highest intensity wing of the NICU. But he does survive and by Thursday we have the results of the various tests and they show multiple infections. But these are most likely caused from being in the NICU. Virtually no infant can stay in a NICU without picking some of this up, so it may not be the cause of the episodes. His
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chest X-ray, however, is clear and so it might not have been pneumonia. The G-tube surgery is delayed until we get some clarity. By the next day things have stabilized. Ezras weak from the pneumonia and back on IVs. But otherwise things are reasonably stable and so the G-tube surgery is scheduled for next week. The aspiration that caused these episodes is part of the risk from the feeding tube down his throat given his inability to swallow and gag. So the G-tube surgery becomes even more important. The clock is ticking before this happens again. E - Suffering and the Cross God creates everything, including humanity, and it's good. Adam is untainted and endowed with free will. Things are great, walks in the direct presence of Yahweh Himself, in the cool breezes of the garden. There are no machete-wielding genocide mongers or early alarm clocks calling us to meaningless work. There is no need for the splatter and smell of blood sacrifice. There is meaningful work, naming, that is knowing and mastering the animals and setting them to their tasks, cultivating and protecting the garden. There are meaningful relationships with each other; Eve is rib of Adams rib and they truly know one another. There is intimacy among humans and between humans and God as we walk in the immediate presence of the God of the universe. Given the opportunity, Adam rejects his task of defending the garden, but rather helps profane it and trusts the unknown whispers of doubt over the openly demonstrated good. Maybe God is not so good. Why should I trust; lets see. Snake, fruit, the Fall. Telling God to suck it. God comes around, Adam, where are you hiding? Shame. True they did receive the knowledge of good and evil, but this thing for which they sold their soul wasn't what they expected, or wanted. It never is, spawning a theme dominate in the human experience expressed in an entire literature with Faust and Mephisto, Buffy and the Vampire Chronicles. Things immediately break down and suffering begins. Adam and Eve are scared, they hide, and they attempt to take matters into their own hands with pathetic attempts to undo the done with those silly fig leaves. Rather than incinerating them, purging the evil and chaos, or even better yet, burning the whole thing down and starting over, God graciously comes around. Hey Adam, where are you? God knows. It's an opportunity for Adam to come forth, admit, confess ask for forgiveness. What would have happened? Who knows? Because that wasn't what Adam did. Kicking and screaming Adam explains that it's the womans fault, or actually Yahweh's fault himself (your tree, that woman you gave me).

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Alright; so be it. Now God will wipe them out and take another crack at creating the best of all possible worlds. If I were God I sure would. Wait, what? God doesnt wipe them out? He keeps them around? The fruit wasn't just a Pandoras Box unleashing evil into the world; it also unleashed suffering as a part of and consequence for this evil. The entire endeavor now thwarted. Love turned to self-centeredness. Righteousness to wickedness. Meaning and fulfillment turned to drudgery and nihilism. Everything completely at odds with the original telos of creation. Completely at odds with our Creator. Truly cursed. The curse and its thorns and thistles and sweat of brow, brings the obvious thwarting of good plans but it also prevents us from finding success in serving ourselves. In this world, an apparent triumph is temporary, fleeting. Vanity, vanity, all under the sun is vanity. Or success comes at the expense of something else much more valuable, just like tasting the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; sure we get want we think we want but its ultimately a failure, a trick, a pyrrhic victory, a devils bargain. And this will taint the entire human race. The fall passes along both the corrupt nature and the actions that naturally flow out of it, both the toxic spring that bubbles up as well as the actual decay of all that its biohazard contaminates. Our experience with ourselves and even the very earth is one of brokenness and futility. Rather than creation springing to up to meet its governor, the human, we struggle and scratch. God had placed the human at the very top of the pyramid built up upon days of creating spaces and then days of placing their creature kings in space, birds of the air, fish in their seas and birds in their air and animals on their land, then crowning it all with human wearing their image of God Himself. Now we're not only at odds with our creator, but each other. Rib-of-my-rib with whom I share intimate knowledge becomes that woman that you gave me. So too are we at odds with creation itself and in battle with thorns, thistles and dust of the earth by the sweat of our brow. This is not how it was meant to be. Suffering and death were not part of the plan but a consequence of our rebellion sealed by eating the fruit from Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In a kind of reverse sacrament, we partake in a physical act tied to a real spiritual consequence, not bringing a promise but rather a curse. The other tree, the Tree of Life, would only now confirm us in such a condition, and so God removes it and places it beyond our reach lest we make our damnation eternal. Cut your losses. He places angles, not the rosy cupid dolls, but the military ranks with flaming swords in hand to prevent us from stealing a taste of the fruit of the Tree of Life and sealing our damnation. And so death enters, and spreads and reigns.
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Death is a natural part of life. You hear that all the time, but its wrong. No, death is not natural. It is a horrible and necessary consequence of us trashing the universe. The angel of death falls upon everyone as a result of the divine curse tied to the Fall. It, the Fall and Death, was never meant to be and is completely unnatural. Your soul is ripped apart from your body. It is horrible and we fear it, universally and rightly. It's not passing away, as a twentieth century cultist coined the term, it is dying, rotting in the grave. It should scare us senseless. It is also a fear of the unknown and a fear, at some level, about what will happen to us as a result of our sin when we stand before the cosmic judge Its a fear of what seems to be so impossible to believe, or at least so far away: the resurrection. We have so many images around us pointing to it. God promises it even in the hints of dead seeds springing to life, blossoming as plants and flowers year after year. Children are born and renew our physical appearances and even attitudes and dispositions. Our myths revolve around dying and rising from the dead as if there is a cosmic need for value of the human being to endure. But our faith fails and waivers and we choose to look away. One philosopher said, No, no it's fine. Death is okay. The earth just gave us life and when we die we simply return its nutrients back to it; a fair exchange. Fair? Heck no. The dime store romance novel, the trinket on my keychain will outlast me as I lay on my death bed. What is fair about that? Death is neither natural for humans or for the earth itself. The earth itself groans as we trash it and bring down a curse upon it. Now all things will degenerate. Things will slowly unwind to chaos and any attempt prevent this rubs against the cosmic grain and meets resistance at every turn. Weeds grow naturally; pulling them is work. That thing, the family vacation or project at work that would be so great and helpful, is thwarted at every turn. And if you ever do pull it off, any single instance of it, it's by your pushing the rock up the hill. But the rock will roll back down, sooner or later. Energy leaks from the universe itself and death will come and claim you; your body and soul will be ripped apart and your body degenerate back to dirt from which it was molded. The rocks cry out and the earth itself groans, forced to swallow the rotting carcasses of its rightful creature-kings created in the image of God to govern it. Gag. Cough. Spit. Hack. Couldn't God have simply avoided all this? Why is suffering something necessary after the Fall and why does he not only allow it but use it to actively punish us through the Curse? On one hand, if you believe in a God, you may not see it as the creatures place to question. On the other hand, you're not human if you don't. And when youre stepping over bodies in the streets it doesnt seem
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unreasonable to ask if this really is the best of all possible worlds, if God, all-knowing and all-powerful, couldnt have come up with something slightly better? Even if we had the right to ask, would we understand the answer? Could we finite beings of clay and mud comprehend much less judge the infinite? If were really fallen and our inclinations are perverse, if whatever moral compass that remains is either outright broken or at least not pointing true north, then the odds of a meaningful exchange and significant insight are rather limited anyway. If I were God, I would have wiped Adam and Eve out for telling me to suck it. Even as a kid, when I made a little sand castle I didnt like, I kicked it apart started anew, taking great joy in that destruction and the next creation. When I give my dog a snausage and he bites my hand, I scold him. And its obvious even to me that it's not the dog's right to ask me why I scold it instead of rewarding it for biting me. The real question, not so much from our perspective but from his, is why doesnt God just simply wipe us out? I thought his justice demands perfection and he can't tolerate a drop of sin, much less the tidal wave that we've unleashed? True he uses suffering as a means of punishment, but why does he allow it, or us, at all? Not only does he refrain from wiping us out, but he begins the story of restoration. First, he covers Adam and Eve with animal skins, the first slaughter and sacrifice of many to come. The word play in the Hebrew is worth noticing. It hints that although they were created in the image of God, in the Fall they took that image off and put on the image of Satan. Only through God making a sacrifice of blood (animal skins) does he restore his own image to them. Now we have an image of God, even though shattered and broken, it nevertheless remains. Then, he makes an astounding promise. The very instant he finishes doling out the curse, he promises restoration. The Law is immediately followed by the Gospel. He promises to send the Seed of Woman, i.e. a real human, who will crush the head of the Serpent (Satan) at great expense to himself. God first promises this Gospel immediately after the fall and the rest of history will unfold according to this promise. We followed the serpent in place of God, opened the Pandoras Box of pain and suffering to the world and put on Satans image in our own at attempts to hide. God will himself crush this serpent. He will not destroy us but cover us, temporarily, then ultimately cloth us in his perfection. But the action that brings it about will require great pain and suffering and even death from God himself. Far from God wiping us out, he promises to patiently endure all the mess and suffering we've brought about. More importantly, he's promised to end it, to bring about reconciliation through recreation. Not wiping out
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and starting over but rather re-creating us and our world then confirming it all in eternal righteousness, finally giving us that tree of eternal life. He refrains from wiping us out on very specific grounds, promises he himself makes. He is the Seed of Woman, the One who will keep the law, earn merits, act, speak and think perfectly in our place. He will stand where Adam fell. And he will win where Adam failed. And just as death came through this one man Adam, eternal life will come through the one man: Christ. He will keep the law and earn merit, transferred to us in a cosmic declaration and will place himself under ultimate curse for our sin and suffering in our place as a sacrifice upon the cross. There, God will pour out this completely just consequences and punishment for our sin, on himself as our substitute. This is the unimaginable turn. Suffering will actually become the means through which God will bring about its end! God will turn suffering on its ear and use it to bring about a greater good than we could have ever imagined. However, it will not come cheap, but require suffering of such caliber that's God himself will be the one to endure it. Here, a story laid at the beginning of the history will govern how all the rest unfolds. The unexpected turn of Redemption and the shock of its Self-sacrifice. The stuff of all the great stories, books, screenplays and myths, whether classical or pop, high or low brow, all flowing forth from this. The history of salvation, Scripture itself, is the story of Gods long suffering and our lack of faith and insults. Did you bring us out of the desert to die, we were better off in Egypt? Wicked kings and false prophets abound with golden calves. God's people, just like Adam and Eve, abandoning him and all he did for them for the promise of self and the glory of the serpent, as Baal or whoever. Yahweh drudges along as a dirty desert God, wandering through the sands with the least of peoples. Yahweh dwelling with them with his glory cloaked by a tent of animal skins or walking along shepherding his people going before them in blazing pillars through the desert day by day, trudging through the muck one leg after the other (pillar of cloud, pillar of fire; pillar of cloud, pillar of fire; right foot, left foot, right, left -- day after day after day). All throughout this holy history, God reveals himself through suffering and hides his glory. But occasionally he gives glimpses. As Israel readies their crossing into the promised land, they see the Captain of God's Army, the one who fights for them and leads the invisible hosts. As Israel follows Adams footsteps and strays after false Gods even Yahweh's prophet despairs. Lord, there are none left, all have gone astray. Bleakness and suffering, but there is a hidden remnant; the plan nevertheless abides and carries on. No, no, there are thousands that I've kept for myself self they are there, hidden, just like me. Even in this
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revelation, he is the hidden God, speaking not in the earthquake or the whirlwind but in the quiet whisper that follows. So too even when the Suffering Servant arrives, he does so hidden. It is as predicted, but still shocking, hidden, the advent not on gilded chariot, but in feces-stained wooden box. The Seed of Woman as Suffering Servant, not born at the Ritz in New York, or a marble palace in Rome, but to the Jews. Small people, former slaves and desert wanderers, now conquered, probably haven't heard of them. The cosmic invasion begins with a infant of a teenage mother, in the backwaters, surrounded by animals and their sounds and stench and feces. Fitting for what he was here to do. God gives one glimpse or the heavenly hosts celebrating as he roles the heavenly canopy back and gives the shepherds a peek, but that's it. Kings from the East, pagans, show up at the doorstep and worship this child, his people are unaware, and then down to Egypt fleeing for his life, then back up. The new Adam; the new Israel. Years keeping the law perfectly, actively obeying; every thought, every word, every deed. Cutting wood, hammering nails, not unlike those for the instrument of his own sacrifice. Hidden. As he begins his open appearances and ministry, there is a question: Can anything good come out of that backwater Galilee? This isnt just a slur but a real question. If God is acting, surely he's not using such unfitting, even unsettling, agents. Wrong on both counts. Were much worse off than we think and it will take a very different kind of work than we expect. The mission will be suffering and it will require Yahweh himself to suffer and he will do it in the most unsettling and unexpected of ways. He will not start with scholars or scribes or kings or nobles but with manual workers as disciples. Go and tell these fishers the master needs them, to leave everything and follow me. He will stay in the company of the despised roman agents like tax collectors and with prostitutes, fitting for the work he is here to do in saving those unfaithful to Yahweh, from Adam through Israel. When he gains popularity, he leaves and stays to the outskirts. When preaching to the crowds at the Sermon on the Mount, he delivers the toughest of messages, he doesnt make the law easier to achieve but raises the bar: perfection. The content drives all the followers away. Turning to the disciples, he asks if they too will go. Lord, to whom else shall we go? This is not a profession that they prefer his teaching, for it is hard, but that there is no other choice. Suffering as the cure? Frick. Wish there were another way, something comfy or easier that lends itself to recognition, something like do your best and lest God do the rest, or be better than the rest. Christ turns his gaze, sets his face like stone, to Jerusalem, to his cross, to unfathomable suffering of divine wrath at the hands of an infinite God.
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Satan tempts him and he suffers, but his dearest disciples tempt him too same. No, Lord, surely you won't do this! This is not for you. Get behind me Satan. He reclaims a donkey, the animal of covenant sacrifice in the Ancient Near East, and the great irony begins. Just as Abraham led Isaac up the mount to sacrifice him, so too Christ rides the sacrificial transport, not unaware as Isaac may have been, but completely intentional and enduring the all the way. Crowds adore him picturing him as the glorious Messiah they would like him, and expect him, to be. Surely he will pick up the sword to free them from Roman rule; a new King David and another golden age of Israel! Hosanna in the Highest. His own church would use this same vision of a Messiah of earthly glory and political kingship as pretext to murder him, and the Roman government would have no choice but to comply. Christ rides the animal used to bring the sacrifice to the altar, enduring the false praise. But these cries for glory, once it becomes obvious that he is on a different mission, will soon turn to shouts for his torture and death. He's not bringing this golden kingdom! He was a fake. Not what we want. Not what we deserve. Let him have it! But this is necessary. Even when they recognized him as Messiah, he was still hidden from them. They missed him. They missed the Messiah as Yahweh. They missed the Messiah as Suffering Servant. Wrong Messiah; not on the white horse with golden sword, but bloody and beaten and stumbling under the weight of his cross. But the praise was necessary. If Christ stops them then even the rocks will cry out. The earth has moaned forcibly swallowing the corpses of the dead, it is now about to taste liberation, the blood of the sacrifice that brings this to an end will flow from the cross and drip down upon the soil. Even the rocks will cry out and split apart and tombs open and release some of the dead in a picture of the Requiem at the end of time. The hour is close. He goes to the garden to pray. Lord, please take this suffering from me. I do not want it. But if it is your will I will submit. No answer. Again, Lord, please. Is there any other way; can I avoid this? Silence; the sound of the door bolting shut form the other side. Again, and the same. Only after he stops and submits then angels come and the military warriors at his command prepare him as sacrifice to finish his mission. He is abandoned and surrounded by unjust failure on all sides, his friends asleep, and his church and government hand in hand preparing his fate. His crucifixion is set and he will suffer, alone. The Suffering Servant is mocked, struck in the face, spat on, and stripped. He stumbles under the weight of the cross as he carries it up the hill. The road to set the universe right always runs uphill. But this is nothing compared to what's coming, once planted as sacrifice. He takes his place
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as curse upon the tree, cursed by God for all to see. Spikes through his flesh, slowly suffocating as his bodys weight slides down in the position of torture and death instead of the throne. The gasping up and delaying the inevitable, again and again. If he's really right about God, if God is really with him and protecting him and in agreement with what he believes and teaches, then let him call out to this God to help him and this suffering from him. God will not come. Because that is not the plan, the mission, not what he's here to do. My God, my God why have you forsaken me? He is indeed forsaken. His suffering is physical pain and enduring false praise and disbelief. His suffering is also feeling totally and utterly abandoned. Christ forgives them and gives up the ghost, the final priest offering the consummate sacrifice. It is finished. The curtain dividing God's presence in the temple from his people is now ripped apart, the rocks crack open, the dead rise from their tombs as the cosmic reverberations of this event project back from the end of this world and its recreation into the next, intruding into this event. The universal clock that has irrevocably counted down to death now starts to spin backwards. Death and decay and suffering have now met their end, but not yet. It is finished; but it is just the beginning. Surely now, God will lay aside his hiddenness and lift the veil to reveal his divine glory! With the resurrection, surely hell come in power, to openly judge, and make all this obvious and clear, crying it from the rooftops. Not so. Three days later there is no trumpet, no angels filling the skies for the world to see. But a rock a does split, one cemented to his tomb. Women, so low on the totem pole that their eye witness testimony is inadmissible in court, are the first witnesses. And there they find... a gardener, a pile of clothes neatly folded. The cloths that have seen the first fruits of cosmic resurrection are not incinerated or burned off in smoking cinders, but neatly folded, yes folded, in the corner. God does not change from the hidden God to the open even after the resurrection. That transformation is reserved for the Return and Recreation. After the resurrection, Christ remains hidden. He appears to his disciples on the road, but they do not recognize him. As they walk they are kept, actively kept, from recognizing Him, as He asks them about his death and resurrection and what it means. Not only do they not understand it, they are scared, distraught, incredulous that he doesnt know about it but they are uninformed as to what it means. This, too, is a picture of our own certainly of events yet complete misunderstanding of their meaning. These are Jews, Gods chosen to whom hes entrusted the scriptures, and even Christs disciplines whom he has tutored. So, under this veil, he begins to reveal through the word, explaining the scriptures to
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them and what the stories, visions, pictures and events mean. The scriptures are of course about Him; he has explained this before. You search the scriptures but miss the central fact that they are all about me. Here on the road, he explains that they are not just about him, his person, but about his mission, his work. Yahweh must be the Messiah and Yahweh, as Messiah, must suffer. The scriptures are about suffering as antidote to curse, and how God himself as Messiah will do the suffering. His own disciples won't believe it. Unless I put my hand in his wounds He accommodates. Here, come see. I'll bear this human body and the wounds of sacrifice for all eternity. The Christian gospel, its teaching isnt a theology of glory, but of suffering, a theology of the cross. It is a not a message of God allowing you to try to earn your own way, even with divine assistance. It is far worse, but much better. You are hosed and don't have a prayer. You've opened the box of evil and have infected yourself, bringing about your own suffering as a taste of what's going to come when you face the infiniteness of holy perfection. But God himself will supply the perfection you need. Rather than wiping you out, hell endure your sin and consequences. He'll even use and orchestrate evil events, evil kings, false prophets, exile, wars and slaughters and especially torturous death and betrayal of Christ in the crucifixion, to bring about your redemption. God himself will suffer as the very sacrifice, earning the requirements and bearing the punishment that your evil demands. Okay fine. We create suffering. Opened the Pandoras box bringing all evils. Suffering from estrangement between us and God, between each other. Suffering between us and our plans in this futile fallen world of thorns and thistles. Suffering ending in death. Suffering as punishment and consequence. But also suffering as cure. Death preventing us confirming ourselves in this state for all eternity. Suffering of God patiently enduring all this as he brings about its end. Suffering in him bringing about that end in Christs person and work, his mission of selfsacrifice. Fair enough. Ezra was a sinner and deserved his suffering. So are we, likewise deserving it. Hard words and a tough message. Doesnt seem fair, certainly not propionate. But we're more sinful than we think, and it's a perfectly holy God. Okay. God brings about end of death and suffering with his own. Christian faith is a faith about suffering, a theology of the cross. The God of blood sacrifice is the same God who offers himself as bloody sacrifice. He's not what we expect. He's hidden. Not the Ritz but the feces-stained animal box. The God of the universe, a fricking baby sounded cow pies in the sticks! Forgoing open military conquest, but completing his mission though suffering and pain.
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Prepared as sacrifice and ultimately abandoned. And that suffering brings the end of death and of suffering. Okay. So where the frick is it! Thousands of years later and nothing's changed. End of death and suffering? Wrong. Its still here, still touches me and pierces me and those I love. Why me? Why this? Why now? Ezra probably deserved his fate and suffering far less than a whole lot of folks I know. I could give God a list of recommendations, were he to ask. But why is this necessary at all? Why must anyone suffer and die, especially now? If death is really beaten and destroyed and swallowed up, cast back down into the deep, then why is still here with us, with me? Why then did Ezra die? And if this good God loves us so much, then why did Ezra suffer? If the relationship between humanity and God is restored and if we're perfect and holy absolutely, legally declared so by the cosmic judge himself, then why the frick did Ezra die? And why so horribly, so painfully suffering up unto his death? And not just Ezra. What about all the reconciliation, removing the curse and all that? If we're all set with God then why do I keep stepping on all the thorns and thistles and why do they grow to so clearly spell my name? Why exactly is it that the universe still seems to be stacked against me? Not just stacked against me but so ready to thwart anything good and so eager to enflame anything wicked, form the machete-wielding genocides to never being able to find a reasonable parking spot? Even if I dont' agree with the story and teaching behind this Christian faith, its double exchange and its suffering and hiddenness, this theology of the cross, I can understand it well enough, at least as well as I understand many other things. I dont know exactly how a plane flies, but have a general idea and have even worked through some of the math and it seems reasonably plausible and so Ill grudgingly get on one. With this Christian faith, I can even give an intellectual ascent. But the experience is something entirely different. The attempts to massage Ezras tiny body racked with seizures and pain brings any strictly intellectual ascent to an end. Where exactly is God? If it's all so fricking magical and we've deserved all this suffering and if God has somehow brought about its end, much less its redemption, then why the frick don't I see it? Why don't I feel it? Why don't I smell it or taste it or hear it? Where the hell is it?

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Part Two: What do I do now? How then do I live?

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Chapter Six 15 Days Wednesday sees Ezra in surgery and it goes well. We were uncertain whether he'll need to go back on the ventilator but he's able to breathe on his own almost immediately, a very positive sign. And so we're hopeful. Despite all the challenges, he's made it through and doing well. We're on the road to go home and turn our attention to arranging the therapies. The therapists at the University of Louisville hospital are good and willing to help. They had planned on expanding this electrode simulation therapy and offering it to infants and Ezra serves as a good catalyst for them to begin. They put together a solution: they will have a team, an infant specialist and a therapist specializing in this treatment working in tandem under the direct care of the head of the department. We're ecstatic. There are some administrative things to clear up, arrangements between the children's hospital NICU doctors and the U of L doctors but these don't seem insurmountable. We're on the right track and making progress. End is in sight. The next morning, Ezra does not seem like himself. He is very limp and has a hard time holding up his head. He is not very alert and his heart rate frequently drops. He repeatedly de-stats. And then, a horrible event. His heart stops. Code blue. It takes several of minutes of CPR to get his heart going again. This happens while Melanie is away, in the pumping room. Someone comes to tell her that they need her at the bedside immediately. She goes back in to see him surrounded by ten people around his bed. Its the scene from the ER on the night of his birth. He begins to breath. The doctor explains that this is a sign of Ezras brain-stem shutting down. We need to decide what we're going to do if this happens again. Josh, sleeping during the day to stay with him at night, comes in and the doctor explains that he probably has a couple of days to live. We sign a do not resuscitate order. For the next 24 hours we are both with him constantly. The following day Ezra has his best day ever. He is extremely alert with lots of limb movement, lots of eye movement. He looks at us and smiles. We decide that we need to get him home.

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Early the next morning is one of the brief periods where neither of us is in the NICU. They call. He is dying. We need to come in. Now. We jump in the car and fly through the streets. Halfway there, they call again and say his heart rate is back up and he's stabilized. Later its another call. We spring up to our feet, ready to fly to the hospital again. No, this times its Sonic. The fast food place is texting Melanie that there's a sale on tater tot combos. The doctors explain that Ezras a mixed bag, he could go either way. He could get better as hes been showing. But it's still very likely that he will die soon. Essentially there are two trains. The first is physical, and on that train things are going well and he's proving resilient, making good progress. The other train is neurological, and that train is diverted, heading down hill. It is sporadic and tougher to predict, but it's the track that governs his brain-stem and governs whether his heart will stop beating and his breathing will shut down. We need to decide whether to take him home. We choose to do so. Previously, we had wanted to wait until he stabilized. We didnt want to introduce him to Lydia to have him immediately die, confusing and traumatizing her. She's already having a very tough time and this has only deepened as events have accelerated. But now it seems good to take him home. Lydia is stronger than we give her credit for. And perhaps going home may help Ezra. And if it doesn't, better to die at home surrounded by all his family where we're sure to be regardless of the hour. To get him home, he needs to pass a car seat test. We bring in a car seat and place him in it. He needs to stay stable for the same amount of time it takes to get home. We're nervous that he won't pass. We have a couple of close calls where his oxygen dips but he's able to correct it on his own and we begin the paper work to release him. E' - Suffering and Union with Christ Mysterious and tough to fathom. God uses evil and suffering and turns it on its ear and bring about greater good. All things, even evil and suffering, work for God's glory and the good of those in Christ. Suffering is very real and in this age, rather than destroy it, God wields it. Like any skilled surgeon he'll use the knife to cut the disease and hell cut with care, but cut deep. Whereas the sadist may occasional feel sorry the victim and ease off the knife or the psychopath may get bored, the surgeon, once started, will finish. It would be crueler to stop once the procedure has begun. His glory is made perfect in our suffering, he tells us. Get ready.

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God's suffered; Christ has suffered; now it's your turn. Death and taxes: certain suffering for everyone. For the Christian, suffering will be specific. You might not be thrown to the lions, but God has promised you suffering. Peter told Christ to turn from his cross, Surely it's not worthy of you, Lord. Little did he know he'd join his lord in a death on the tree, but hanging upside-down. Peter wasn't the only one. The other disciples likewise failed to understand that sharing union with Christ meant sharing not just in glory but in suffering, that Christs kingdom on this earth is one of suffering. Lord we want to be at your right and left hands when you come into you kingdom. Really? Can you drink the cup that Im going to drink? Certainly, they thought. Sure, no problem, sign us up. They were wrong. No, you cant. It's a cup of suffering and it must be drunk down to the dregs. The places at my left and right aren't at the heavenly table of celebration and power. That will come, but not here. On this earth, here and now, the place at my left and right will be the crosses on Golgotha with a thief and murderer. Suffering caused by God's enemies; fair enough. But suffering from God; well that is something else. God doesnt author evil. But he uses it; redeems it. He's a master wielding that knife. Or better yet, a skilled surgeon cutting. He allows thieves and robbers, and Satan himself, to attack Job; famine to drive Joseph down to Egypt; Pharaoh to slaughter a generation of Hebrews and on and on, until most notably, he allows the high religious officers to crucify Christ. As Luther described it, suffering is testing or proofing of the Christian. Not as in taking a test to see what will happen. But as in hardening and forging iron in a fire. It is in this valley of the shadow of death, that faith is made real. Faith that professes a belief in the opposite of what we clearly see, confessing a hidden God who loves and redeems and will make all right, despite the clear pain, sorrow and struggle of this world. The belief that all things will work for our good and come from a tender fathers loving hand despite not understanding and in spite of feeling outcast, abandoned and completely isolated from anyone including this very heavenly father. To believe, to acknowledge, accent and trust this same God even when he appears to us wearing the mask of the worst devil. To trust during the epic pain as well as the slower day to day drudge. This particularly Christian suffering comes in different forms. Its not just humans who target someone for teasing or ridicule or even prison or death; thats just the world. The flesh is worse. That is, the struggle and persecution with yourself and the battle between the Old Person and the New Person. The Old Person, the remnant of this old world causes you struggles, failures and suffering, all particularly painful in the face of the
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redemption in which you now stand. As bad as the world and the flesh are, the devil is worse. Satan prowls about, chained and sentenced to damnation, yet still roaming and able to hunt you down to cause you grief, plague your conscience and assault your faith. Again, borrowing from Luther, Satans persecution causes real suffering and often comes especially when were already suffering. I ache, Im hurt, I grieve, Im pained. I dont feel comfort or Gods love or even God presence but only hear the sound of the bolting door. I am weak and vulnerable, and then, precisely then, he comes. Yes you do suffer and suffer greatly. That is true, that is real. What does that tell you about this God? When push comes to shove, hes not there. Look, when it really counts what happens? What do you feel, what do you see? It is pain, not comfort; emptiness, not consolation; loneliness not support. God gives you but half truths, twisted, an incomplete picture. He will make you suffer for him and asks you to endure it, even enjoy it for his glory. What kind of God does that make him? All those who profess his love and service burn or meet the blade. And during that pain, precisely when you need him most, he is nowhere to be found; far from standing with you, he hides. Youre prayers go unanswered, you receive no explanation, your suffering endures, and it is all that goes on, all that you can feel, all that is real. This may not be for everyone. Satan may take a different tactic for others or as the events create opportunity. Another tactic more subtly attacks your conscience. Of course God is good. But he only loves and protects those worthy of him. And as for you? Well, he knows you too well. He knows what youre like, what youve done; he knows who you really are. Hes seen you. Do you dare expect anything but this pain, but a door shut in your face? Hes holy and can tolerate nothing less than absolute perfection. And you, well you know what you think, what you say, what you do. What youd like to say, what youd like to do. All those things no one else knows; He does. Did you really believe that hed respond to you, that he could love you? No. Of course not. And you have your answer, the proof right here, in your pain and abandonment. This picture of suffering, persecution from the world, flesh and the devil, and Satans attacks takes us to the heart of the issue, the Gospel and its theology of the cross. Suffering itself and the response to Satans particular attacks only makes sense in light of the particular Gospel of forensic justification; that is the great exchange of Christs perfection for your damnation and Christs experience of the lonely, hidden road that leads to the cross. On one hand, Satans accusations are well founded. You are a sinner and deserve just damnation. But these accusations are only half truths. You damnation has been suffered by Christ who has
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paid the price for you sins past, current and future. More than that, his righteousness has been credited to you, gaining you entrance to heaven, even if you cannot feel it here on this earth here and now. Suffering is not just a result of the curse humanity brought on itself, but the way in which God unwound it and obliterated it, all through great pain to himself along with suffering and emotional abandonment. Christs life and death and resurrection destroyed death and death itself is now an end to this suffering and entrance to cosmic celebration. Suffering is as a union with Christ. He has promised that the world, flesh and devil will persecute the Christian and it is precisely this suffering serves as a characteristic and defines this present age, the interim period in which the free offer of the Gospel still echoes throughout all time and space and during which God holds open the doors to the cosmic tent of celestial celebration. This is hidden now but soon to be openly revealed at the Requiem when the cosmic clock stops and the tent flaps close. This is the suffering of the Christian, the persecution that Christ warns us about. It is this suffering that Luther saw as so powerful that the only remedy and protection would be a clear understanding and profession of the Gospel of forensic justification. For the Hummel-collectors, forensic justification is largely unknown and as is its power to protect when faced with Satans persecution. Without it they suffer tremendous chaos when bad stuff happens. If God rewards good and punishes evil then I must be evil, or else my faith is entirely wrong. But this is the theology of glory, not the cross. The chaos is far worse with the self help maven. Think positive and good things will happen, that's the Secret. Gotcha; thanks. Man we must have been thinking some of the worst thoughts around then, to have an infant die on us, huh? Woe to us. This too is a theology of glory, doing your part in securing the obvious divine reward for the good, whether thought or deed. God does not, however, reward the good and punish the evil here and now on this earth. Thats the theology of glory. With the theology of the cross, we're all evil and yet we're not treated all the same. This is not based on us thinking thoughts or learning some pop Secret. Its grounded in the great exchange where God punishes the only righteous One for us, and he grants us evil people entrance into his presence. Job's comforters bought into the theology of glory. Hey, you're suffering; you must have done something horrible. No, that wasn't it. Suffering's not grounded in what one individual deserves over another; that is justice. And evil is not just a philosophical idea that you can think away but a real tangible power with a real devil behind it. Real evil, you know the stuff of Auschwitz: active, palpable, tangible. (Funny how folks can believe in an incarnate God creating the universe from nothing, but a devil, well that just crosses
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the line). And that evil doesnt follow a textbook of justice or its scheduled program. Although Justice can bend evil towards its will and use it as an agent, evil itself hates justice. Rather, evil preys on the weak, in its own way; it's random, indiscriminant, and ruthless. Dont try and tease out the inner logic of Jeffrey Dahmers dinner plans. It's enough to know they are horrific and without sense or justice. In fairness, every tradition has its own method-ists; Lutherans their pietists and Evangelicals, there, well Evangelicals. Against all this, the theology of the cross sees sanctification differently, not as a way to earn anything, but as a response to what has been already earned. You don't bark to become a dog, and barking harder, or more method-ically, doesnt help. It makes you crazy, or shows that you already are. Rather, you bark because you are a dog. Sanctification flows from gratitude, as response. Faith spontaneously breaking out in acts of love. But sanctification, like God himself, is often veiled, hidden and wrapped up in the mud and the blood and the beer, to quote the theology Mr. Cash again. The funny part about this, and not funny like ha ha, but funny like this makes no sense and I couldn't make it up, is that your suffering is actually part of your union with Christ himself. God suffers, Christ suffers and you will suffer; he's promised you that. You'll suffer struggling against yourself and then against the universe and a cosmic power out to get you. God will use this entire thing to make his glory perfect in your suffering. But at the end of the day, you'll suffer because you're connected to Christ. So where is God in the midst of this suffering? Christ's name, the thing that defines who he is and what he came to do, is Emmanuel, God with us. It's not Man as God, a little spark of the divine light and all that. Nor is it even man becoming God through good works, meditation or the like. We are distinct from him; creation, not creator. Nor is it God aloof, a watchmaker too busy with the ball game on TV in the corner. He's God with us because he cares, and far from just watching he participates. Far from only participating he suffers, with us, for us. God walks in the cool of the garden, through the dirt of the desert sands, hovers in glory in a tent of skins made for sacrifices, then the same hovering in the flesh as he dealt with us in Christ. Emmanuel is the Suffering Servant, who knows our pains and abandonment. Emmanuel is God with us, not just him saving his people from afar; sending orders for others to do the dirty work, but himself fighting on the front lines. God is with us, united with humanity as he takes us onto himself in the incarnation as the Seed of Woman. He is legally united with us as our representative head, the new Adam while keeping the law in our place and sacrificing himself in a great exchange where our God sees our sins as Christs and Christs perfection as ours.
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Christ keeps the law while knowing your name; every second of every day this work is for you, and you and you. He offers himself on the altar of the cross as a blood sacrifice in your place, knowing your name again for you, and you and you. He shares his person, both body and blood, and its benefits, through the sacraments, for you and you and you. Baptism unites us with his life (perfect obedience) and death (perfect sacrifice and atonement) and resurrection (ours to come, but not yet). The Eucharist, his blood sacrifice, unites us with his body and benefits. These sacraments are institutions of salvation because of suffering. Your union with Christ and his suffering gains you justification, but also sustains you in sanctification and tension in the already until the not yet, the persecution from the world, the flesh and the devil. The preaching of the word is likewise and institution of suffering and its role in salvation. It is the story of the Suffering Servant, the Messiah who must suffer as the Holy Ghost operates upon the listener creating the faith necessary to receive the message. The linkage is not trite, not a joke, not an emotion or a sentiment; it is not a legal fiction. God credits you with Christs perfection and him with your damnation, just as if he were you and you were he. That union is so very intimate. But that's not all. He also substantially connects you to Christ's person and work in such a way that they really do belong to you. Through word and through sacrament, you are linked, joined, grafted into his life, death and resurrection. Eat my flesh, drink my blood. And you thought sex was the height of intimacy. Too risqu? Read Luther on the subject. But don't let your kids catch you. Wrap his works with a different cover, something respectable. These means of grace, Word and Sacrament, the very means with which Christ sustains you during your times of suffering, these are things that Christ uses to draw you closer and links you more intimately with his own suffering. They are the instruments of the Suffering Servant and who performs the great exchange. They create and operate only in that union and linked to his suffering. God gave us pictures to this effect. The waters of baptism were first seen with the waters of chaos at creation, then flood destroying humanity but bearing Noahs remnant, followed by the Red Sea where the enemys armies are wiped out as the chosen pass through. The blood of the Eucharist begins with blood sacrifice in the Garden of Eden to cover Adam and Eve, then the sacrifice of the lamb whose blood marks the chosen people and cause the Angel of Death to pass over, followed by the system of sacrificial animals whose blood are poured out and splattered against the alter to keep Gods presence from consuming us, their flesh consumed by his people. Sacrifice, sacrament; even sounds the same.

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Christ uses these means to unite us with his suffering, so that the Christian becomes a little suffering servant, a little Christ: a christ-ian (like burr-ito, a little donkey). The union in this life is with suffering until death finally unites us with his glory. Most who think about union with Christ imagine a linkage with power and glory and honor. If I were God, Id get do this or that. If I were united with God, man that would be fantastic. Perfection, eternal life and all that. That will come, but not yet. We're reckoned perfectly acceptable but that won't characterize our life on this earth. The perfection, confirmation in holiness, comes only after the purging of death. We've murdered, and although we're forgiven we still must pay a penalty. Death, for us, brings the end to suffering. Not nothingness as Buddhism and the like promises. But the end of suffering and death. The scales painfully burned away, a thorn pulled from the flesh. With our death, our sin dies, and we're freed, perfected and will at the last day be resurrected, rejoined with a perfect body just as Christ's. Then the day of the cosmic feast. Not nothingness, but real goodness, tangible, palpable. Feasts with the best of meats, juicy meats and the best of wines, the good stuff. In this interim, it's sanctification. We exist between ages, in the already but the not yet. We've been saved and gained eternal life and perfection, but we do not yet feel it, not yet experience it. We do not yet have it unfettered and without cloak; we can't see it taste it or touch it as it is. We're beings, who, if you could see us as we are, you'd be tempted to either run from a demonic nightmare or fall down and worship, but not yet. So why not yet? Why does God not unite us to his glory in this world? Asking God to unite us with his glory, to end our union with his suffering, is essentially asking him to bring about heaven, now. The prayer is your kingdom come, and it is not a bad one. Christ taught us to pray it. This is asking him to begin the recreation, to finally kick over the fallen sand castle and build it anew, with same sand. The best image is Peter comparing the world that was before the flood to the world that is now. This will be the same when we compare the world that is now to the one he will recreate through fire. The new heavens and new earth, recast, reforged. Tested, not in the sense of passing a test but smelted like a hot metal, destroyed to be recreated. Not destroyed by water again, but fire. But still the same world: re-creation. New heavens, but still heavens. New earth, but still earth. None of this translating matter into spirit. It is not that matter is bad and spirit good as found in the many religions in Professor Hempwhaerers books. God likes matter, he made the stuff. He took humanity, matter and all, unto himself and in Christ will wear the resurrected, scarred material body for all eternity. Rather, it is re-creation,
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matter made anew just as in the Garden, without all that bad stuff. God promises this and has fulfilled the mission that accomplishes it. Our union is already made, the recreation has begun. But it is not yet finished, our sinful self not yet purged from the battle of sanctification through necessary entrance with death. So when? When does this happen? When does God finish it off, when does his kingdom come, in the open, for all to see? Paul though he'd see the event in his lifetime (don't bother getting married, by the time the certificate's ink is dry it won't matter). Two thousand years later, we're still here, still waiting, still suffering. Your kingdom come; please, now. It's not a bad prayer, a good one actually. The promises never seem fulfilled fast enough, and when they are, there's often still more of the not yet than the already. The saints in heaven, not those extra holy method practitioners but anyone credited with Christ's perfection, they cry out, How long oh Lord, How long? Israel coming back from divine chastisement of exile, God promised a rebuilt temple, but Daniel sees only it in shatters. Even the pre-incarnate Christ is stirred and moved to cry out: How long, how long until I can come and make it right? The waiting has been going on far longer than two thousand years. God's been patiently enduring, and orchestrating since the fall when he first promised the Seed of Woman. It could go on for thousands of years more. Seems like the height of narcissism to think that any age or generation is the worst, or the most important, or the one that will trigger the Requiem. How long, oh Lord? Not a bad prayer. Same as the heavenly host and Christ himself. But don't hold your breath. This ending isn't about revenge, it's about justice, a setting things right. In a popular western movie, one cowboy goes hunting down the villains and friends think it's a personal vendetta. But only the hard-drinking gunslinger corrects this notion. Hes not after revenge, but a Requiem. Requiem is seen humanity's deep and innate need to have justice, to have all things set right. This need leaves us conflicted as we know our nature, the things we've done and left undone, and despite our attempts at self persuasion (Im better than so and so, more good than bad, etc.) we know where we'd end up at that event. The Christian claim is that Christ dispenses both the requiem as well as supplies the righteousness that covers his people from his doling out of justice. Not covering humanity in the abstract or in theory but specific humans. He lives the perfect life and goes to the cross knowing your name, for you and for you and for you -- the same words you hear at the Eucharist. Paul is not the only one to wait but not see the promises completely fulfilled. God's people, even prophets, have been confusing it for a long time, confusing the partial fulfillments with their consummation. Basically
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the prophets have a perspective from being on the ground; they see the promises fulfilled in their initial form: the earthy king David, the earthly temple rebuilt after the exile. But these are images that God gives us, pointing to their ultimate fulfillment: the true king Christ, the heavenly temple. Christ has defeated death and brought the resurrection. His resurrection is now and while the saints who die have immediate eternal life with Christ, their bodies are not resurrected until his return. This prophetic perspective of partial or delayed fulfillment works its way into modern stories. In Star Wars Anakin is prophesied to bring balance, but then he turns into Darth Vader and runs amuck. Its a generation later, through his offspring Luke that he ultimately destroys the Emperor and fulfills the prophecy. Prophesy and its layered fulfillment often has us thinking that the end is, finally, right around that corner. You can understand Paul's point. After all, this Christ had finally come and had beaten death, surely this is the day upon which death is swallowed up, where it loses its sting and its victory rings hollow. Well yes and no. Christ's friend Lazarus dies and Christ delays and arrives too late. If only you had been here, this would not have happened! And then, even knowing that he will be raised again from the death, not just at the resurrection and at the end of time, but in a matter of minutes, Christ weeps. Short verse. Jesus wept. Death isn't natural. Its horrible. And here Christ gives divine sanction for grieving. Then, so that he could demonstrate his mastery over death, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead. (Quick question, if you had the choice, would you prefer to be resurrected from the dead immediately after your death to still live on this earth? Legend has it that Lazarus never smiled again, something to think about.) Lazarus suffered and died so Christ could use that, turn that to glorify God. Same thing with the paraplegic whose friends lowered him through the roof to Christ. Folks asked, who sinned this man or his parents? They still hadn't learned the lesson from Job. Neither the man or his parents had sinned, at least not more than anyone else, nor is specific suffering a direct consequence of divine retribution. Christ responds, but so that you can see the glory of God, your sins are forgiven. What does that sinfulness have to do with suffering? And who are you anyway, it's blasphemous to claim that you can forgive sins unless you're God; it merits the death penalty. Christ went further, revealing himself as Yahweh. What a surprise that the Messiah was Yahweh himself. They asked, are you greater than our father Abraham? He replies, before Abraham I-Am, Before Abraham, Yahweh. The same Yahweh in who suffers and turns suffering on its ear. Don't believe it? Okay. Which is greater to say: your sins are forgiven or get up and walk? But so that you
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can know that I have power to forgive sins, Ill strip off just a touch of this hiddenness? Get up and walk; and he did. And they glorified God and believed and came to faith. Aha, the suffering, turned on its ear is what God uses not just to chastise you, but as a means through which he brings others to faith. Your suffering is union with Christ the Suffering Servant who proclaims the gospel. And God's glory is made perfect in that. You can understand how Paul conflated it. All the prophesies say that on that day, God would bring his gentiles to the mountain and swallow up death, when his Suffering Servant came to town. But thats just the already, the not yet is that that day's consummation. The bridegroom has arrived, the engagement has ended, but the wedding is not yet finished, the consummation not yet begun. Bride and groom are each others, the deal is sealed, they've kissed, and the contract has been signed. Already. But theres more, much more, but not yet. If you see time as a straight line then all of the prophesies fall along it from older to newer. Some are about the king earthly David and his suffering and glory, some about the return of Israel from exile and the earthly temple restored, some for the advent of the Suffering Servant and the end of death, and some for the Requiem and the consummation at the end of time. But God is not just the God of history, trudging along down here in our mud and blood and beer. But he is God of the past and present and future, above and beyond time. Those saved before the advent of the Christ believed in the promise of the Messiah to come, but they were saved after the Messiahs arrival and his work, which somehow retroactively applied, flowing backwards to them. That nature of time and its relationship with salvation is something to think about when considering how Gods curse covers a couple of generations but his loving-kindness extends to families over a thousand generations (a thousand is Hebrew shorthand for the almost uncountable). And although he commands things, baptism and the like, for salvation, he remains all powerful, and creative. Salvation itself in him fulfilling his own requirements is a consummate expression. The thief on the cross is an exception, but illustrates the possible. Today you will be with me in paradise. Today. Salvation takes place on one hand in the upper register, the heavenly realm, but it likewise takes place in the real history down here in the lower register, when Quinarius was governor of Syria. And these two realms are related, bridged by God, not by our climbing the ladder, but by his descending, not just by Christ but by granting us images of the earthly that point to the heavenly. The heavenly temple was the real one, that one where Christ stands as our cosmic priest. The one in Jerusalem, that was
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the miniature, the tiny representation or type of the real great on in the heavens. The ladder linking the two stretches not up but down and is best seen in the incarnation. All these prophesies overlap and are fulfilled and partially fulfilled, often in the earthly images. Its almost as if you could see them plotted out on a line you'd see them quite distinct. But if you're standing on a horizontal plain and trying to view the points while standing in the line, on the paper, Flatlander style, then you'd see the points double up and conflate. Theologians call this prophetic perspective. Esoteric but still around and powerful. Anakin is supposed to bring balance to the dark side, says the Star Wars prophesy, but it's not him in his prime or on his own, but a generation later with his son, who throws the Emperor in the abyss. Old Darth Vader did participate in that event, just not when, or as, you would have thought. The same holds true for King David, and Christ as the real King or Israel and Christ as the New Israel. The same is true for the day death is swallowed up, first on the day of the cross and then on the day of the return. Death, where is thy sting? On one hand death is already defeated, on another hand is it not yet destroyed and remains sharp enough to make God incarnate weep. But its day of ultimate destruction is coming, that date is already etched in stone although hidden from us. That is the day when it's swallowed up, when all the gentiles come in. When the God of history harvests his people from every tribe, race and tongue. Lazarus and the paraplegic suffered and through suffering God glorified himself; that is, he brought people to faith. Maybe that's what he does with your suffering; maybe thats part of the reason why he allows it and how he redeems it in a union with his own suffering. Maybe he uses it, and brings good from it, as he has you continue to profess even in the midst of suffering. Three Hebrews under the divine censor of exile faced a fiery furnace for professing alliance to Yahweh and yet they professed. God can save us from his furnace, but if he doesnt, he's still God. Maybe the important piece is the profession in the midst of suffering, regardless of the outcome, whether they lived through a miracle or died through the mundane. Maybe its not just the miracle where the lame gets up and walks but the confession when faced with the diagnosis of cancer that's just as important in turning evil on its ear and redeeming suffering. Blessed are those who have not seen the signs and still believe. Regardless of whether your suffering ends in miraculous recovery or not, or whether God uses a profession in the midst of it to call others to faith, or whether he lets you see its results or not, one thing that is for sure is that suffering is part of living in this age. Your suffering defines the age
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that delays the requiem, when all bets will be off and the clock will stop. This age, and your suffering in it, is when God holds open the cosmic gate calling in his sheep. This suffering stops when the age ends; when death is swallowed up, then its too late and the flaps of the tent of celebration close. In the here and now, every day the clock keeps ticking, every day the machete wielding genocide mongers hack away and every day that darn alarm clock goes off, is another day God that delays his reckoning. Every day in this age adds one more day the period of redemption where he delays his Requiem, as first promised after the fall in the garden. Each day now is one more day to harvest from the corners of the earth. Christs suffering is the grounds of that, yours is not. But your continued suffering is part of the plan that keeps that gate open, and adds one more day to bring the others into the fold. Who knows for how long? Come Lord Jesus? It seems as if heaven should be so far away, as if there should be more contact, more overlap, some signs, or some slippage. But the world is completely fallen, and heaven is completely holy. And this is an age bound and determined by time. Heaven comes after the discreet event of the requiem, and is a different kind of time: the eternal present. God uses suffering, turning it on its ear to bringing about specific salvation, but you most likely wont see the effects. He often keeps this work hidden. That may be someone elses story. He has you play your part and advance the narrative for other characters, but he is the author who ties the plot together. We see this with Christs work and yet dont know the effects on the particular people; some, but not most. Perhaps the same is true with your suffering. Not through miracles and recovery, but perhaps through defiant profession when miracles are withheld and recovery fails. Occasionally we do get glimpses. Those early Christian martyrs in the coliseum played keys roles in the religions turning point from subversion faith of the slaves and women to state accepted to state sponsored. God can save us from this fate, but it he doesnt (and don't bet on it), he is still God. Hmm, wonder what that's all about. And when I'm faced with my own suffering, I really wonder about that. Sticks with you; makes you think. Your cross is not likely to be literal. Its probably not going to be a stoning, like Stephens where he could clearly copy Christ, forgiving them for what they did. Your suffering won't be lions in roman coliseums, but it will feel like it. It did for us. Ezra deserved his fate. He, like of every child of Adam, deserved death and suffering. Maybe he deserved it less than others. But life isn't fair, and fairness, where I compare myself to others, is a concept brewed in hell. And honestly, the punishment was far less than what any of us deserve. But it was horrible. Jesus wept. So did we. If the God of
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the universe couldn't hold it together then we didn't have a chance. And this weeping is good and just, a proper response. How long oh Lord? How long, damn it? And yet, and yet, who know how things will work out? Who knows what God has planned and how he intends to turn evil on its ear? Ezra's life has been redeemed; he's been credited with Christ's merits and accepted as not guilty and perfectly worthy. And he's skipped the lifetime of daily battles in sanctification, Old Person vs. New and all the cosmic tension of living in the already and not yet. He's in the Right Now. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it helped bring this about for someone else? In any case, those days he lived and suffered, are days during which the cosmic gate stayed open for others.

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Chapter Seven 8 Days The following day we will go home. We've had training on all the medical equipment. Josh had cleared out Lydia's room at home and built a bed just like the hospital bed. It is high enough to stand over while operating the tube mechanics of feedings and performing therapy sessions, with adjustable inclines to keep Ezra breathing well and to prevent the saliva from accumulating. We're sent home with some of the supplies like suctions tubes, but not enough, at least of the right ones. The medical supply people come and drop off oxygen tanks but we don't have the right catheters and they don't have them in stock, or in their warehouse. We order some next day on Amazon but they won't be here soon enough. This is bad. After calling everyone in town we find a couple to get us through until the shipment arrives and so we go down and purchase them from a warehouse. We're focused on getting the therapies going as soon as possible. These seem to hold the best hope and there are stories of children like Ezra having remarkable rebounds with them provided they start immediately. But those administrative details bite us. Thorns and thistles. At one point we're convinced that we won't be able to do this in time, a technicality of miscommunication between the hospital to the therapy center. Josh goes down to the hospital and basically accosts the doctors, forcing them to fill out the paperwork exactly as they require. Now we're in business. Two days later, we are at UofL therapy center for our first meeting with the team. They are humane. They care. The director has a close friend with a child like Ezra. They work well together. We decide to have them do all the therapy including the other types of therapy that others were to do. This is very encouraging. We think this can work and work well; we see the road ahead. We're to come back after the weekend to begin. Over the next few days we have some ups and downs. The two trains. Ezras doing well physically and has good periods where he's alert, recognizing, moving. He smiles and even plays. Lydia has been wonderful. We didn't know how a one-and-a-half-yearold would react. We heard stories of difficulties when a new sibling is brought home. But she's wonderful, caring, helping baby Eh. In the evening: family time. All of us together. Playing. Lydia being silly lying with Ezra and Mama. Pictures and videos that we had been taking in the
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NICU, are now taken at home. Everyone happy. We made the right decision coming home. Light in shadow. Prayer answered. Some of the child development books have experts advising parents not to tell a child about the loss of a sibling lest it confuse them or make them sad or scared. For us, it's necessary, and part of ensuring Lydia's education. This world is tough, under a curse. We suffer. But we will trust and have hope. Even through the valley of the shadow of death our shepherd leads us. Even though a furnace consumes us, he is still God. We explain that one day baby Eh may die but we will see baby Eh again. And one day mama and dada will die too and go to join baby Eh in heaven. And later Lydia will die too. We'll all see each other again, forever. Lydia brings Ezra her favorite blankets, touches him gently, tries to cuddle. She knows he's sick and she needs to help take care of him. In some ways, she's known what's going on and seeing him gives her an explanation. And playing a role in the family, helping, helps her. This will be her calling for the rest of her life, along with ours. And she's off to a great start. D' - Suffering and the Hiddeness of God It's the thing that no one tells you, that no one talks about. You're told not to fear, by scripture and by friends. But that's the point. God tells you not to fear precisely because you will fear. You're told God is with you. But when you suffer you will feel the exact opposite. He must tell you, make the statement and explain: despite you're not feeling it, actually he is there. And just because he tells you not to or to do something, to trust or not to fear, it doesnt mean that you will. The command or requirement doesn't mean that you have the ability to do it. Be perfect, just as you heavenly father is perfect. Doesnt mean you will or can. One on hand, it is absolutely certain that God is with you, in control. It is beyond a shadow of a doubt that he will not give you more than you can handle, that he will turn this evil also on its ear and weave all things for his glory and your good. It is objective and not dependant on your thoughts about it or feelings during the experience of it. On the other hand, it won't feel that way. Rather, it will feel exactly the opposite. You will most likely feel alone and abandoned, deserted in your time of deepest need as if God isnt there and doesnt care. To quote Luther, God comes at you wearing the mask of the worst devil. It really is God, but it will undoubtedly seem like the worst devil.

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Literature is full of stories where the plots intertwine and the characters experience unexpected good through suffering, each that they could not have otherwise known, and even unexpected without unbelievable intervention from outside the plot. This device of the author is a picture of the all knowing, but hidden God. It allows the reader to follow the paths and line, and then shows them how they intersect, disclosing, if the author chooses, exactly how it works out. The best literature has the greatest of interwoven stories, unknown to the charters at the time. The greatest stories turn from suffering to salvation through these minutely interwoven, carefully intertwined connections, orchestrated by apparent chance and happenstance. And through this device, whether book, movie or song, the author creates and the audience gets glimpses of what goes on behind the scenes. There are other analogies. We give our child a shot and she howls and screams. She can't understand that its necessary and will stop the greater evil; even to bring about a diseases end. Trying to reason with her is of no hope. Her limited nature doesnt allow her to understand. We can only hope she trusts us and knows that we love her. We hope she understands that we wouldnt do that unnecessarily and even if she can see the results. She can't see the sickness it prevents or the disease that it cures; it is for her good and her recognition of this can only be a matter of faith. God has a bunch of toddlers. And, the scriptures are his story, where he babbles to us in baby talk, showing this to us in the limited ways that we can best understand. But these are no ordinary babbles, but he uses these human words to create the faith with which we trust him on this point: that he is a loving father, even though he pierces us with the needle of the vaccines syringe. Trusting God in the midst of pain is nearly impossible, even with the faith that he gives in the Word. That very word often shows us how the saints struggle with this. There is no place as clear as the psalms on this experience of suffering, and feeling abandoned in the midst of it. My God, my enemies surround me they mock me, they mock you. My soul is tired, weary. I cannot go on. There is no hope. Where are you? Haven't you promised to be there, to help? But you hide your face from me. My God my God, why have you so utterly forsaken me? On the one hand, these are divinely inspired words of agony and abandonment. Not just from David, Christ echoed the same words upon the cross, My God, my God why have you forsaken me. If you know nothing else about this gospel, those words should send chills through your bones. Why indeed? Why did God forsake Christ? Christ was forsaken, split apart according to the curse of the covenant, and bore the penalty of violating the Law. And God did not just forsake him, but
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actively poured out his wrath upon him. The experience for him, and for us, is often this feeling of utter God-forsakenness. Christ was forsaken as God poured his wrath out upon him on the cross, but we are not forsaken. God stays with us, bears the suffering for us, but our experience feels very much like Christs. We feel abandoned and struggle to reconcile this to the promises of God. On the other hand, God is merciful and God is there even if we can't see or feel it. He has searched us and knows us. He is before us and behind us and lays his hand upon us, even knowing the words on our tongues before they are spoken. Far from God not being around, there is nowhere to which we can run from him. On the wings of the dawn and in the depths of the sea, there he is. Even in darkness we cannot hide as his presence brings light. He created us in our mothers womb and knit our frame and ordains all our days in his book. This knowledge is too great for us. Brings tears to the eyes. God, of course, as God, fills the heavens and the earth. And far from uninterested in us, he is God-withus. Far from being abandoned, Emmanuel, suffering with us, suffering for us, and saving us through it. But it will not feel that way. Both of these things are absolutely true, and opposed, at same time. Abandoned but accompanied. We'll feel forsaken but God really is there, hidden. And in hiding himself he reveals what he's like and what's he's done for us. This makes tension. The intellectual profession of the certainty of an objective, concrete, unshakable reality; smack in face of an experience that feels exactly the opposite, one of utter and absolute despair and the feeling of certain abandonment. This tension echoes down through the millennia, from David to Christ to us. We call out to God and hold him to his promises, expressing faith and trust, but do so as complaint, pointing out how we feel just as if he doesnt exist, or doesnt care. That tension, a profession despite feeling the opposite, is bridged only by faith. The old bald guys called it the priority of the intellect. That doesn't mean sitting around sipping cappuccinos in black turtle necks. That means these facts are objectively true regardless of how you feel about it; and that faith is a profession in the face of an experience. Just as love is an objective choice to pursue the good of the beloved at the expense of the lover, rather than an emotional or chemical high that emphasizes the self, so too faith is profession. And just as acting on the disposition of love produces real emotions, so too does this profession move from the objective to the experiential. Knowledge (I understand what this thing is), ascent (I believe it to be true) and trust (I will stake my life on it, will continue to actively believe it in spite of everything I am and feel reeling against it). That doesnt mean that faith removes the pain and feeling of
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abandonment in suffering. Quite the opposite, it means that in the midst of squarely feeling pain and abandonment you will profess faith that God is there, in control and orchestrating this for his glory and your good, not just as an intellectual proposition but with a personal trust that extends to the affective and emotions, to the whole person: whole hog, all in. Lord, to whom else shall we go? This all-in is part of the nature of trust. I can trust that person. Really? Would you tell them your darkest secret, stake your life or those of your family on that trust? Um, err, well no. Faith, the ascent that something is true and the trust in that promise and the person who made it only counts when something meaningful is on the line. When push comes to shove, when it is life and death, or it at least feels that way, its then that you discover what you really believe and who you really trust. Will you really profess this faith in a good God, not just when he gives you what you want, but when he holds it back or takes it away and doesnt answer you, when confronted with real unspeakable horror and utter abandonment? Its here that he really glorifies himself, here where he tests us. Not test in the modern English sense of the word, like passing an exam, but rather in the forging, testing, proofing and smelting kind of way. God is the one operating on you; he is also the one operating in you and on your behalf. He carries the load, seals the outcome and creates the faith for all this. But the process is not pleasant. He uses the molten hot fires of suffering to purge the Old Person and to steel the New. Its precisely on this table that the surgeon carries out the cutting of the procedure. Both things are true at the same time: the pain of abandonment and the reality of the God and his justification with us. And both must be held together, in tension with one another. That's why when dealing with those suffering, you must be careful not to do harm, to infuriate with triteness by glibly recognizing only the one pole. You both profess God with us, but failing to acknowledge that it doesnt always feel that way, that suffering often feels like abandonment, leaves the one suffering alone, further abandoned in that experience. God has a plan for this. Hey, screw you and screw that plan. That may be the case but the glibness with which you speak, the fact that you drop that as an incantation with an expectation that merely speaking the words magically removes the pain, well, like I said, screw you. There are other things to say, but regardless of what you say it must recognize the reality of the suffering and the experience of those suffering it. This is unbearable, horrific, but in the midst of this suffering God is here. He is working and will turn even this evil on its ear just as he did with the crucifixion. You may not see it, you probably won't. But it's

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there; it's real, even if hidden. And one day you'll see it, you'll know. Not yet, but soon. I know, I know; not soon enough. This tension between the objective truth of Gods promises and the experience of suffering characterizes this age, this interim. It is part of living in this overlapping period of the already but not yet, when our justification is already accomplished, but our perfection not yet consummated. The tension only will be resolved in the recreation that belongs to the age to come. This means that you will typically feel a great divide between what has objectively been done and what you see and how you feel about it. And that's precisely the nature of this sanctification, the battling out of the already justified New Person, and the not-yet obliterated Old Person. God's in control and he has a plan, but that plan includes your suffering. He's promised that and he's a skilled surgeon who won't abandon the procedure midway. Worse than you thought. But better too. Your suffering flows from the union with Christs own suffering, as a general characteristic of this age, if not from a specific linkage between him suffering in your place and you receiving his merits. That great exchange declares you not guilty and perfectly worthy, and that exchange links you to his suffering. Youve been justified by it, and when the cosmic clock stops you'll be perfected, but in this in between period, the space of the already justified, but not yet perfect, you are being sanctified and you will suffer from battling with yourself, the universe and Satan. But as long as you suffer it means the cosmic gate is still open, that the God of history is actively gathering his people up to his holy hill. A gate is one picture, the other picture scripture uses is a tent, with the flaps open, calling and receiving people into the furnished wonders of shelter and community. The tent flaps open to the festivities inside. Christ suffered to first open the tent and call his people inside. Your suffering is a characteristic of that age in which this call to continue goes out and Christ continues to bring the train of nations up after his victory. Christ has already swallowed death up and destroyed its power. But he has not yet eradicated it and removed it by replacing it with eternal life. He has not yet given us a taste of the fruit of eternal life. He barred that with flaming swords after the fall and grants it to those only after their death and his return. You'll suffer but it is part of God turning evil on its ear. He knows your pain, has cured its root cause and will bring about its consummation at the end of the age, after bringing all his chosen in the fold. And as you suffer, he'll be there, even bearing it with you and for you. But, and here's the kicker. Wait for it, wait for it. It won't feel that way. Your experience, more than likely, won't feel as if your suffering is part of a cosmic plan. It
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won't feel as if there's meaning to it. It won't feel as if it's part of union with Christ. You'll pray, and like Christ in the garden, hear silence and then that bolt of the door barred from the other side. Often it's not so much a temptation to blame God for the suffering but for his refusal to answer, to give an account. How can he bar the door, especially now? Even the Word, which sustains and helps us in this tension, specifically speaks to this tension and the difficulty it causes us. In one of the bestknown Psalms, God give us the image of him as the good shepherd, leading us and protecting us. Its a well-known image and youll often find the verse laser etched on many a Hummel shepherd figurine. Its the pastoral psalm: clear waters and comfort. Nice, serene, calming; walking in the cool of the Garden type stuff. Then, at the center of the poem, the turn, the point of inversion where the Hebrews put the most important stuff, we find something shocking, often over looked. In the midst of the cool waters and gentle breezes in the fields, we are suddenly confronted with: Yea, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death... Wait. What? What was that? Where'd all that cool water and sleeping sheep stuff go? Valley of the shadow of death? That's doesn't sound good, certainly not pleasurable. The psalm professes that God is with us, and he is good, but it also recognizes, with a chilling image, the suffering and death that characterize this world. It then goes on. Even though I walk through that, I will not fear. God is there, leading me even through this valley. More than that, he will reward me, on the basis of his own efforts. The psalm continues, God will not only lead me through this death but will carry me to a feast of celebration and there he will have us dwell in his halls for all eternity. Both are true at the same time: the valley of the shadow and God Emmanuel accompanying me, protecting me, bringing me through the dark, painful pass and then celebrating with me, in his house. But, I shall not fear? I wish. Maybe when feeling my most heroic, I might have visions of being able to pull that off. But that is certainly not my experience, especially in suffering. I do fear. But God is not just commanding us not to fear. Rather, hes exhorting us, calling us to trust. He reminds us that he is Emmanuel, God with us, even if we dont see or feel it. All throughout the gospel, he asks us not to fear. He does that precisely because he knows that we do fear, that we will fear; but we need not. That is part of living in this age where God remains hidden, the interim of the already and the not yet. Where is thy sting death? Uh, right here. At the same time death is already bound, already doomed, and ultimately thwarted, just not yet consummated, not yet openly revealed. Maybe you're different and won't feel abandoned when you suffer. Maybe you'll avoid fearing and valiantly trust and go on. Luther exhorted
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people to do so. This was a sort of a formula he followed giving advice and comfort to those who suffered. It had the touch characteristic of a German soldier writing a combat manual. Don't despair; Christ has won and you finally get to escape this earth, which is really a hell anyway. You should be glad that your child is with Christ now, not suffering but in eternal celebration. But when it stuck home, when Luthers beloved daughter died, he wept like a proverbial Austrian girly-man; and entered a prolonged phase of despair and depression. But why? Why do you feel abandoned when you suffer? Why does it feel like Gods so far away precisely when you need him most? Part of it is definitional, that square having four sides thing again. Suffering has many forms, many facets: the physical, psychological and emotional, often overlapping. Physical pain, dread and despair often break like waves over rocks in an endless storm. Experiencing that, by its very nature, includes abandonment, the dark night of the soul, despair and dread. The Germans have big, long, heavy-sounding words best left un-translated but you can sound them out. Anfechtung. Beatendiedowen. Kickendiecrappenoutoufyouen. In these times, when we feel crushed, abandoned and left to rot, its at these times, to borrow an image from Luther, God comes to us wearing the mask of the worst devil. And its at these times, to borrow another image from Luther, we must fight God against himself. That is, we must hold God to his promises, even when they don't seem to work, even when all looks lost, even when it looks as if there is no way possible out, even when the door on all hope seems to shut. We must trust defiantly, and recall God to his own promises. We must wrestle with God as did Jacob, fighting, struggle and ultimately coming away touched, not with a glow of grace, but with a limp of dislocation. Destined to hobble is the best we can hope for, but struggle we must still. We must, as Moses, invoke Gods own promises against him. When God was to wipe out Israel, Moses did not plead that they really werent so bad, but that God had made promises that prevented him from destroying them, that required him to save them. And God always honors his promises. Just as his nature prevents him from tolerating sin, so too does it bind him to honor his Word. And he has promised to be with us, to turn evil on its ear, to work all things out for his glory and our good. When God comes to us under a veil, wearing the mask of the worst devil, we can do nothing but bind God to his own promises, his oaths, his covenants, nothing but cling to these in the Word and Sacraments. Lord, to whom else shall we go? Even should this furnace consume us you are still God. Even though we dont see or feel what you have promised we shall cling to it and invoke them, not for you sake, because you will not
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fail, but for ours. Clinging to these promises doesnt merely remind us of them, but turning back to them, in the Word and Sacraments where he makes them tangibly known to us, creates the faith and sustains us to carry on and trust in the midst of suffering. There is a tension in suffering, between the experience of abandonment and the certain of Gods promises. It is not just a tension because we live in between the ages, death already condemned, but not yet completely removed. We continue to suffer in this age and experience abandonment but do not yet see Gods promises openly fulfilled; we dont openly see God with us nor see how our particular suffering works out for his glory and our good. That tension also comes from the struggle between our Selves, the Old Person who hates God and sees suffering as evidence that he is not in control or does not care and the New Person who holds God to his promises, acknowledging them as certain and trusting in the One who made them. The experience of suffering is part of putting that Old Person to death. When you suffer, your Old Person howls in protest, demanding answers and an account from God. The thing is, you often wont recognize it, wont even be aware this is happening, that Dr. Jekyll has left and it is Mr. Hyde now in control. The great theologian Johnny Cash gives us a poignant image in his song, The Beast in Me. The beast in me is caged by frail and fragile bars and sometimes it tries to kid me that its just a teddy bear. When we rage, and Mr. Hyde has taken control, it makes sense that God might stay silent and bolt the door from the other side, confining us to our quarters. It might be for quarantine. Or perhaps, he simply deems to ignore the two-year-olds tantrum. It might be better to calm him with silence then a futile attempt to reason with the young toddler Mr. Hyde; and that would most likely simply enrage him more anyway. Its precisely when we suffer that we get a glimpse of this, who we really are and our place not only in the universe in general but in the great exchange of justification. Clearly you are beggar. You are nothing, Christ is everything. And you both suffer. The only theology that passes this smelting is the theology of the cross. There is no place for a theology of glory when you suffer. Lord, why me? What have I done? Surely so-andso deserves this more? Ill tell you what, how about we make a deal? No. The door bolting is the curse of the Law falling upon you. It razes you; reduces you to ashes. Just as the commandments hold up a mirror and show your state and position in the state of affairs, so too does suffering. But again, this is only half the story, one pole in the tension. It is also completely true at the same time that God is with us, and Emmanuel is for us. He wont make bargains, but will give you what you need and
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much more, just not what you want. Christ is everything, has fulfilled the law in your place, suffered as your sacrifice and is with you now, bearing your burden. This is objectively true although it does not feel like it. This is hidden, for now. And this age is not one of open explanation and vindication but one of battling your Old Person throughout your life. God will, ultimately, obliterate your Old Person with death and then will consummate your New Person with Christs return and your resurrection. God begins to hide himself immediately after the fall and it continues throughout all of holy history. He remains veiled even with Christ, even after his resurrection, hidden while he keeps the gate open up until the clock strikes midnight. He remains hidden from you when you suffer. Hidden, is your experience of this union with Christ and your justification. Indeed your real self is hidden from you too. That New Person is cloaked while embattled and the resurrected body you will soon wear is presently unseen. Even the means of grace that unite us with this objective truth are themselves means of concealing. Body and blood, person and benefits are not obvious for all to see, but in, with and under the bread and wine. You only possess by means of this faith that bridges the gap. And it is a chasm that lays between the objective reality of the content of the Christian profession and the painfully 'obvious' exact opposite of what you sense. Doesn't taste like body or blood. God, Emmanuel with me? Sure doesn't feel like it. Good God in control? Excuse me while I step over this body in the street. On the one hand, God is hidden and he won't be clear. Especially when you suffer, you wont feel his presence or see his purpose. On the other hand, it won't matter. God can save us from this furnace if he chooses. But even if he doesn't, he is still God. His presence and his purpose does not depend upon our experience or understanding. Ezra suffered, and we suffer. We prayed and felt no comfort, despite the words of scripture that called us not to fear and proclaimed comfort. Indeed the greatest comfort came often from the words where God recognized that we felt abandoned. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? In our suffering we felt abandoned, complete and utterly apart from God. Swear I heard the door bolt shut form the other side. And yet we know that God was with us, Emmanuel. He was in control. He would turn even this horror of horrors on its ear and weave it into good, just as he did with the Christ's death. We had intellectual knowledge of this objective article of belief. We accented that this fact was true. And despite feeling the exact opposite at every turn, despite clear evidence that of abandonment, despite clearly tasting the wine but not the blood and
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despite having to hop over dead bodies in the street, we trusted. Lord, to whom else shall we go? We, of course, were not the ones trusting. We are, all, nothing; most miserable of people. That trust sprung forth from faith, likewise not our doing. God created it through these unbelievable words and communicated these cosmic truths concealing them under the ordinary and common: water, bread and wine. We trusted, but we wept. Both true at the same time. Both real, for now. In the end, we are trusting that this current tension will pass away, not slowly in time, but with our deaths and at the cosmic trumpet. We hoped that God would keep Ezra from suffering, that he would even spare his life. And if not, we hoped God would somehow turn it on its ear, use if to create good, even if unseen. Folks coming to faith, doctors trying new treatments and curing others. We are absolutely confident that this is a small, but important, piece of this cosmic plan. We may not be the audience clued in on the plot but the author is using this piece of the narrative to advance the story in ways that we cannot conceive. And despite him bending his knee and babbling with us, we toddlers simply aren't capable of understanding; we little Mr. Hydes arent so inclined. We must, as New People, trust, as children, not comprehending but placing faith in the good father who makes the promises. Its especially tough but particularly meaningful when we suffer, when we feel abandoned, when the knife of the surgeon cuts or the needle of the doctor pierces us and causes us to shriek and howl. We may never see how it unfolds, who it affects, what causal chain it begins. When we look at the beach, well probably see every single grain of sand in the exact same place. But it does not matter. Even if God does not save us from this fiery furnace he is still God. And in the midst of suffering and death we are surrounded by life, even if we can't see it. At least not yet.

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Chapter Eight 5 Days On Saturday Ezra has another major episode and we think that he has died. He stops breathing. His heart stops beating. He turns blue. His veins spider-web. He screams without making a sound. He convulses and then lays quiet, no sound, no breath. Eternity passes. And with a massive gasp he awakes, panting and trembling, staying with us and defying death once more. He needs the rest of the day to recover. But recover he did and hours later he was back up, rebounded, moving and smiling. His grandparents saw him. They held him. Rev. Lange came, saw Ezra and us. We had thought that the nurses had a tough job; cant imagine that of a pastor. Scripture and communion and prayer. Lord, to whom else shall we go? We continued to read to Ezra. All the Gospels, the Psalms, creation in Genesis, Christ's Resurrection, Paul's words about our resurrection, and the Requiem of Revelation. We explained that he was baptized, bought with blood and united with Christ, part of his family. That he had a heavenly Dada who knit him together in the womb, who was in control of all things, and cared for him and loved him far beyond anything even we could conceive. That should he die he would that very day be with Christ and that we would see him again, soon, and forever. Then another episode similar to the last one. Could this go on, for weeks, for months, for years? Death would be awful, but this future too horrific to envision. And we understood what it meant to pray for death. Then another episode, and another, increasing in frequency and decreasing his reserves. The following day, Sunday, Ezra was wiped out. Lydia was at her grandparents. Melanie in the living room with Josh, Ezra in his arms. We told Ezra that he had done a good, good job. That we were proud of him and honored to be his parents. But that he couldn't stay here like this. It was time for him to go home. Time to go see his heavenly Dada, who would stop his pain and suffocation, and replace them rest and celebration. Time to go from not being able to swallow to feasting with the Creator and Redeemer of the Universe. He knows your name and has reserved a seat at this table.
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Then another episode. Anyone watching would have been horrified at the site of the previous episodes, the shrieking and the like. But this was different, quiet. Ezra stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating. And he died. This time, he did not wake up. Not on this earth. Around us, down here, was quiet. Peace, at last. Then we called Rev. Lange and then 911. The firemen arrived, their second time at the house. They took a pulse, fingers placed in Ezra's thigh. The young man looked at his captain, and then shook his head. We had been quiet, unsure. We had seen Ezra revive so many times it seemed entirely possible he would do so again. But now we knew. Melanie wailed, deep soul-wrought sobs of pain and loss. Josh was quiet, shocked by the continuation of the surreal. The ambulance arrived, then the police. The mechanics around modern death now unrolled. Authorities determining that this was not a homicide, poking the oxygen, suction and heart rate machines. The room was reverent, and sorrow-filled. An officer had a newborn baby at home. His eyes glazed over, drifting. Then Rev. Lange arrived. Scripture and prayer. We need that, but we also really need help navigating the logistics. He began arranging the details. The funeral home. The graveyard. All the things we dreaded to navigate. The coroner arrived and conducted his interviews. He had already spoken with the doctors at the children's NICU. They had known this would likely happen but were deeply and personally stricken nonetheless, the lead doctor weeping. We had grown close to them and them to Ezra; they had done well with us all. Taking Josh aside, the coroner explained that he too had had a child exactly like Ezra, the two trains, and his child also had died. The funeral home personnel come to take Ezra away. Child stripped from mother. Tears. That is not him. That is his body. He is in heaven. Looking down. Watching. In glory, breathing, moving, feasting. Happy in his state, his real age; and celebrating, even if mourning for us. He made it home. We will see him again. Do we want to wait to have the funeral? No. The sooner the better, day after next. Open casket? No. At the funeral home? No, at the church. Email to the U of L therapists, we wouldn't be coming in tomorrow. Call to Melanies parents; call to Josh's. Tomorrow we will make the funeral and burial arrangements. The following day we will have the funeral and bury him. 77

C' - Suffering and the Church God is not only with us in a general sense but has specifically promised to meet us in Word and Sacrament. It is a divine service not because the pieces are divinely inspired, not because we serve God with it. It is a divine service because the divine One serves us. He uses this Word and Sacrament to create faith and to forge the union in this great exchange of justification. Here God has promised to be with us, Emmanuel. Although he is hidden, God himself is truly present, hovering in divine glory just as he did at creation, in the garden, through the desert, in the tabernacle, in the temple, with Christ, at the resurrection, and at Pentecost. Its in this service that he is present. He is not apart from us. We are no longer barred from him, a blazing fire whom we may only approach through blood of covenant sacrifices and their sounds and smells. Here he comes to us and welcomes us on his knee as children. Ah yes, but his coming to us and revealing himself to us is done through his suffering. It is indeed a sorrowful thing that he had to become incarnate, to keep the law on our behalf and still more sorrowful that he had to endure the torture of men and divine wrath of God a sacrifice on our behalf. On one hand, it is joyous. An amazing act of love that brings such a reversal so that we should stand up and shout. But upon reflection, that joy is happiness for us and our state of being benefited. For God, the one who brought it about, it was sorrowful, grievous. God gives us images, events and institutions that point beyond themselves. The little earthly temple was a type, a model of the great heavenly one. The prophet and priest, speaking the word and performing the blood sacrifice, pointed to Christ the true prophet and priest, proclaiming with authority and power and sacrificing himself. The heavenly realities stand above and behind these types, but God uses them to accommodate us, uses them as the place where he intrudes from the upper register into our lower domain. This doesnt stop with Christs incarnation, resurrection or ascension. It continues today. The images only stop at their consummation, when Christ returns unveiled at the Requiem. At his first invasion, they change; at his second coming they are no longer needed; the realities behind them will be here, open for all to see; no need to show by image. In this interim, the already but not yet, they have a different form. Today, in the divine service God speaks not through prophet, but as the pastor proclaims the Word. Today, God passes over our sin through blood sacrifice, not with a priest slaughtering animals, but with a pastor
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administering the Eucharist. These are the means through which God serves us and with which we, the church, serves its neighbors. If that is true, if the God of the Universe is really and truly present, if God uses what happens in the divine service to create faith and link us in union with Christ and his work that gains us a verdict from this cosmic judge of both not guilty and perfectly worthy, if God acts here continuing the story of salvation and all his doings with events and institutions of holy history, well then the church should reflect that transcendence. The church and the divine service should not look like the world, but something entirely other. It should reflect the cosmic celebration. Death, our most grievous enemy, has been destroyed and the heavens resound with a chorus that downs out even the angels proclamation at Christs birth. But the Church should also reflect the transcendence of suffering too. The trials and tribulation of those suffering are real and grievous and should be mourned. But they are also are meaningful. These sufferings are not in vain, but part of this cosmic story. They are wielded by God to turn evil on its ear. They are the battleground where our Old Self wages war with our New Self in sanctification. They are the opportunities where Satan attacks and where God sustains us through Word and Sacrament. They are occasions that God may use to cause us to profess his promises and trust in him who made them, even when all evidence and our own experience of abandonment is completely at odds. They are a necessary part of this in-between age during which the flaps of the tent remain open and God calls his people up to his holy hill. Finally, suffering, particularly death, is the means through which God ends our suffering and brings us into his presence and celebration for all eternity. Word (faithful preaching, teaching of scripture) and Sacraments (Baptism and Eucharist) are specific and promised means where God comforts you and girds up your faith. These are physical, tangible expressions that point to and are inextricably linked with spiritual realities. Proper preaching is music to the ears of the one suffering. God delivers this preached word in two ways: the Law and the Gospel, two poles in the great exchange of forensic Justification. The Law is prescription for obtaining perfection and shows you have failed. The Gospel is how this Messiah has kept the Law in your place, how he has taken your punishment for its violation and credited to you the reward of eternal life for keeping it. Indeed preaching law and gospel serves as means of grace and creates the faith necessary for trusting in a hidden God in the midst of suffering.

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When the pastor preaches the Gospel, not his opinions or his take on current events, even under the guise of making the Gospel relevant, but when he tells the story, when he utters the proclamation, it is God himself speaking to you with his living voice. When the pastor acknowledges suffering, particularly that of the Suffering Servant, or contextualizes it for the experience of those suffering in the congregation that is God himself acknowledging your suffering and showing tender mercy. Not only can you listen and be sure, but these words create the life and faith necessary to trust even when the experience is the exact opposite of apparent reality. This is the means of escape when this loving God, as Luther says, comes at you under the mask of the worst devil. This preaching is salve to the suffering soul and as Peter addresses in his letters to the Church, the means to patiently endure the blows of Gods kind fist. The Word is not the only means of grace in the midst of suffering. So too are the sacraments, Baptism and the Eucharist. When these are practiced, in accordance with the scriptures, they too create and sustain faith. They connect us with Christs body and benefits, his life and death and resurrection, and even with each other. Baptism may not be frequent, but its remembrance can be. The baptismal font at the front of the church, even when not in use, is an active reminder that these promises not only apply to the person being baptized but continue to apply to us as well. When we baptize people, especially infants, it should remind us of our own baptism. Indeed, their faith should remind us of ours. In a sense, all our faith is embryonic, and we are all like infants, incomplete in our understanding, incomplete in our knowledge and ascent and trust. Fortunately that faith is not our own, not dependent upon us, but is a gift from God. It is upon him and his promises that any faith relies and in which it is created, sustained. He uses the same means to cause dead bodies to stand up and profess faith, skeletons in the valley. He effectively uses it to handle us, whether adults and gown well into our antagonism and hatred towards him or infants embryonic in our sin, doubt, and disbelief. When he brings the dead to life, age makes no difference. Just as God uses the Word and Baptism to create and sustain faith in the midst of suffering so too does he use the Eucharist. Unlike Baptism, the Eucharist can be frequent. The more the better, even weekly as scripture describes it. Like baptism, it is a means of God serving us. Its power does not depend upon us. Although our sinful nature always reverts back to a theology of glory and what we do in the economy of salvation, regardless of how small, communion, like the Gospel itself, does not depend upon any pietistic practices or making ourselves worthy. The Eucharist is where God dwells with his people, Emmanuel, not just in
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glory cloud but body and blood. The Eucharist is where God brings his salvation to his people, the person of Christ and his benefits from the great exchange. Likewise, God uses these means of the sacraments to create and sustain the faith necessary to grasp body and benefits, so too to believe and trust and patiently endure suffering. The Eucharist sustains the faith of the suffering; it is the thing they need most. How could you deny this to those suffering as frequently as needed? How could you ration according to historical convention, tradition or a subtle pietistic preparation-ism rooted, however obscurely, in a theology of glory If someone wants to frequently abstain then so be it, there's no compulsion to commune on any given instance. But don't allow that to tyrannize those who need communion. Dont their umbilical cord to their creator, redeemer and sustainer. Doing so scandalizes their consciences, even if they cannot articulate it. More importantly, someone withholds the means of sustaining their faith precisely when those suffering need it most. If youre going to restrict Christ and ration his benefits, at least set up a system where those who do need a strengthening of faith, suffering or not, can partake. Perhaps a waiver or donation; something approaching an indulgence? Luther had some things to say about all this, but wed like to keep the book to at least a PG-13 rating. Think this is a little over the top? Read Luther. Paul, for that matter. God uses the sacraments to create and sustain faith, and in them he meets us truly and really, but not openly. God uses the sacraments to reveal and conceal himself, just as he operates throughout all of holy history. On one hand, the sacraments conceal. I don't taste Christs body or blood, nor am I visibly zapped with a cosmic thunder bolt of Christs merits of perfection knocking me to the floor. Its possible that I not feel anything emotional that reflects these cosmic realities, but then again I may. Regardless of what I feel, something special, something cosmic is going on. Granted it's helpful when it's not drowned out by Chuck E Cheese music. On the other hand, the sacraments reveal. God knows our difficulty in trusting him, especially when he calls us to believe the opposite how things seem. Im past child bearing, says Abraham, how can I be the father of many nations? I sure don't feel comforted in my suffering, I sure don't see the body and blood. I don't see my place at the heavenly table at the feast of victory upon the holy mountain where death has been swallowed and we celebrate with the best of meats and best of wines. If this is that cosmic feast with all the saints throughout all time and space, then why cant I see Adam, Moses, David, Christ, or Paul? Wheres Luther? Wheres Ezra?

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If this is a celestial reunion with the saints and family and friends, it sure doesnt look like it. What I do see is a ragtag group of misfits. I see a tacky veneer clad altar rail and polyester banners and hear off key singing. These promises, like so many others, are already accomplished but not yet clearly revealed. We dont see them clearly and they seem but half fulfilled. Lord you said you'd return us to the land and restore the temple, we're here but its in tatters and shambles. Lord, you promised the cosmic feast, but, well, you know. I do, however, see the wine. I can smell it and I can taste it. Here God accommodates us, just as he did for his people who could see blood sacrifice and smell and taste the other covenant sacrifices. That blood, the physical substance of the sacrificed animals didn't atone in and of itself. Something else was coupled with it, the promises. But the promises are tough to believe in the abstract. The blood and animals was for the people see, smell, taste and touch. These were not just symbols. They were united with, not changed (not trans) with the promises themselves. So too is it today. I smell, touch and taste the wine, not the blood. But both are there. The promises are tough to believe, it having the material there makes it easier, comforting even. The ceremony of the sacred that surrounds all this does help with the emotions, the gap between the objective reality and the subjective experience. But even in this God is hidden. Not some crazy substance, but the common. a, bred, wine. The stuff all around. God consecrates the common, joins the sacred to the profane. Not unlike all the myths and stories all around, he makes meaningful with Christs incarnation and sojourn, sacrifice and victory. The Word and Sacraments are the high points of the divine service, but not its totality. The service itself serves as a whole. All the pieces fit together: the invocation, calling on the God; the confessing, admitting our sin and asking for mercy on account of Christs merits; absolution, the pastor speaking forgiven on behalf of God; singing, both holy praise and divine wonder; the sermon, where God himself speaks and creates faith; the Eucharist, where God tangibly communicates the gospel to us; the benediction, where God proclaims his blessing on us. In all this lies miniature drama of the story of creating, salvation and consummation. The pastor turns to God and speaks on our behalf, then turns back around and speaks on Gods. He wears white outer garments covering the common rags in this copy of the heavenly. And this weekly drama is tied to a broader cycle that spans the year, from Advent, to Lent, to Easter, to Pentecost. The cycles within the cycle, stories within the story, are miniatures reflecting the cosmic reality.

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A quick aside on the triteness that pervades our culture and is always seeping into our worship. The church and its divine service should not be trite. In the divine service you meet the creator of the universe, the cosmic God himself from whose throne history unfolds. There you meet the one whose holiness burns as a perfect fire. Take off your shoes for you stand on holy ground. Or at least lay off the happy, clappy, slappy. And if not for Gods glory, then for your own good. Someday soon, you too will find yourself in the NICU at 3 am or in the hospice or at the graveside, and the Disney-worthy ditties and cotton-candy liturgies are going to fail you. Put yourself in a place where your faith is girded up by catechism, law and gospel liturgy, and hymns that sing the story of Gods redeeming his fallen and wicked people. God serves you and now out of gratitude, you serve each other. Christ is united with each Christian individually, joined in his suffering, death and resurrection. So too are they united with each other, in a different sense, but still bound by this union with Christ. Empathy is the practical outworking of this union of believers. Empathy, that is truly grieving at anothers loss. Oh, Frick, I can't believe the Smiths have to do this or that. If it doesn't grieve you, that lack of empathy should cause you concern. This isnt particular to the church. Suffering is universal and empathy widespread. Collectively shared grief used to be socially defined for some period. People knew about it, respected it, and shared that with those grieving. But empathy is particularly important in the church, partially because of the churchs message about suffering, partially because its a way for the church to serve one another. It was an incredible reassurance and comfort when people reminded us of Gods promises to us and to Ezra. Ezra is in heaven now singing with the saints. You will see Ezra again and when you see him, it will be forever. The other way to serve those suffering is through prayer. The one suffering prays for comfort and that may not come. Abandonment: My God, my God why have you forsaken me? We can also pray for them. And, like the one suffering, we may only hear the sound of the shutting door. But we will share in that with them. Likewise, when we fail to see our prayers answered and those for whom we pray continue to suffer, we will share the tension that those suffering experience. On one hand, we will feel bad for those suffering as we have empathy, sharing their pain. We will also be feel rejected, having God tell us no and denying our prayers. And we will feel confused, not understanding how God is in that suffering working for their good or his glory or why he doesnt seem present or answer us, much less give us an explanation. On the other hand, we will profess that God is with us, that he is in control, that he will

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turn evil on its ear, that he will work all things out for the good of those suffering and his glory, that he is present and with us and for us. You are called, not to ignore the suffering of others or brush over it with a trite sound-bite but to share it, and participate in all these facets. Consider all that practice for your own suffering. You may never see the response or effects of your prayers, but trust God will answer it, that God is a good God and good father who will grant us good things. Even wicked fathers don't give their kids snakes when asking for a treat. But we may not see it, or feel it. Even though God is good and will answer our prayers, we will still suffer. The hairs on our heads are numbered, but they may fall out because of chemotherapy, signaling our coming death. The birds for which God cares, the image that Christ gives us as evidence of Gods control and orchestration, well these birds will fall from the sky and die and rot. In all this, he is still God and he still knows us and takes care of us. He does not care for us by keeping us from suffering, but rather by sustaining us even in its face. He will allow us to suffer and to feel abandoned, but will continue to stay with us, carrying us, and ultimately bringing us to the end of suffering through death and a life of eternal perfection and celebration with Him. So when the church helps those suffering through Word and Sacrament, through basic physical, financial and emotional assistance as well as prayer, we express empathy and share the suffering, carrying each others crosses. The church can also serve those suffering through education. Catechism and study. The basics of the characters and events in the story of salvation as well as their significance for the participants and for yourself and your own role in this story. Doctrine and theology. How the scriptures interpret themselves and what they collectively teach us about any person or topic, particularly Christ and suffering. Train yourself and your children, as well as those who will suffer. Everyone in the Church will suffer; will at one time or another find themselves beaten, broken and bruised. But this isnt just true for the churchs member but for the church itself. The church will suffer. We shouldnt be surprised. Just as Christ promised suffering for his people individually, so too for his people collectively as the Church. The world, the flesh and the devil assault the church continually in the period of all ready but not yet. Individuals will suffer and the church itself inherits the same fate. The church should, like Christ, look bruised, a bent reed, not blazing but only smoldering, not much to behold. A ragtag bunch of misfits and screwups, present company included twice over. If you walk in a church and it
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looks glorious and triumphant and successful, run or at least pause. Not that it can't happen, but it is the exception not the rule. The road of history is littered with the rotting carcasses of formerly glorious lumps of Christendom, whether the golden roofs of Rome that infuriated Luther or presidential audiences and millions of tele-viewers. Whereas the church under the cross, the story of Gods people is tattered, torn, obscure but a remnant preserved by Gods own hand in history. That church glorious always tries to take its place in the political. Most often, mainstream liberals are Democrats and evangelical are Republicans. But both work for a social gospel, the redemption of the government and a seat at that political table. The church under the cross is most often the victim of government, either its oppression or persecution as in China or in its liberty and prosperity and consequent indifference as here. The church doesnt always attempt to makes itself glorious through the political. Other options for triumph include simply frenetically growing the church itself to mega-proportions. More members, bodies in pews, preferably the young with children, but also the older with checkbooks, are great measures of success. So is a calendar bursting at the seams often with activities designed to transform the culture or else to further accelerate and ensure a Christian ghettoization (Christian book clubs, Christian cooking classes, Christian plumbing lessons and the like). These things aren't bad in and of themselves (well, the Christians book clubs arent exactly festivals for literati and the Christian cooking classes tend to do more homage for Cracker Barrels lesser copies; dont know about the Christian plumbers, we use a former Roman Catholic now agnostic considering Taoism as he has the best rates and always get the job done right). But these aren't evidence of justification, and certainly not measures of faithfulness to the Word. And, they can be dangerous, especially given our sinful nature. The world hates the message and growth often comes at the expense of pandering. Activities can become semi-obligatory, even tacitly through social obligation and pressure, ultimately becoming burdens in themselves to anyone, and especially cruel to those suffering. Transforming this world, either through political action or Christianization/ghettoization is not the Christian message. The Gospel is about God transforming the person, reckoning you righteous through justification, constantly battling the Old Person in sanctification, then recreating you in perfection through death and resurrection. God will handle the world, not just transforming it but destroying it and recreating it at the Apocalypse. The Gospel transforms the Christian as God works belief in Christs person and work, and then a loving response of faith active in love towards the neighbor. The response is not isolation
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(ghettoization) or dominance (political or social transformation). These drives flow from a desire to segregate the sacred from the profane. But that is a not Gods command, much less his way. It turns out that God uses common, or profane, elements. Written words, water, bread and wine are among his favorites. He also uses everyday people and everyday acts to work his plan, to save, to comfort. He calls and uses the pastor. But he also uses the milkmaid, the doctor, lawyer, janitor, congregant, friend, neighbor. One thing about God, and hes funny this way, although he is absolutely holy, he absolutely forbids us to try to be holier than him. When the Ark of the Covenant, the physical box where God's literal glory dwelt, was out being carted through the mud, an ox tripped and it headed straight into the muck. Someone reached out to stop it from its fall. He was struck dead. Its an understandable mistake but so tough to comprehend. I know that God said don't touch it. But surely he wouldnt want to get soiled in the filth! Far from it, God forbids us to use our common sense there. Were not allowed to define the sphere, nature and elements of Gods activity. Were not allowed, to deny him the profane filth as not befitting his glory. Its a good thing too. That was the way of our salvation. The fact is he emptied his glory, set his face to the cross and came specifically to fall into the mud and muck. Enduring the profane and redeeming it, is all part of the plan, for him, and for us. The one trying to save the Ark from the mud fails to see that God is already dirty, dwelling with us in the mud as Emmanuel. More importantly, he fails to recognize exactly how dirty God will have to get as Emmanuel on the cross. The church will be stricken, smitten and afflicted and typically it will look that way. Ragged and rag tag rather than politically influential or bursting at the seams with those washed and perfumed problem free. Regardless, the test of a church is not in its look, not in its memberships, not in its activity agenda or even its financial status, but in its orthodoxy: the degree to which it faithfully proclaims the law and the gospel and administers the sacraments, properly fenced and frequently. The church, especially when orthodox, will not only look ragged, but God may keep it hidden. Elijah, seemingly the only orthodox man alive cried out to God: Lord, you have no one left! But God has his remnant, his church, although it was hidden, even from Gods own prophet. No. I have thousands who have not bent the knee to false doctrine. We find orthodoxy turning away people in droves, even with Christ. The Sermon on the Mount was Christs anti-growth program. After he spoke these hard things the crowds went away. And ultimately Christ goes on to suffer, fulfilling the
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things that he preached. Everyone leaves, even the disciples who promised to stay with him. One last word to the sufferer. You too in the midst of your grief and pain, your deepest suffering, will be called to serve. Your suffering will be public, shared, and this may be a burden. You will have to talk about your experiences often repetitively, you will need to be gracious in accepting help, and you will need to help others in their grief for you. Fleeing to a cabin in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness will sound tempting. But dont do it. Youre called to serve others while suffering. And in that sense you are once again united to Christ, the suffering Christ who publically served others, including you. And taking the Alaskan route would probably just get you mauled by a bear anyway. All of this may be rubbish, but it was at least our experience. We sang the good songs to Ezra, at 3 am in the NICU. Those songs helped him and us. We read him this scripture and he loved it, so did we. Maybe it was just the sound of our voices. But that Word has the power to create and sustain faith. Not only in adults but even in the dead. Certainly in the infants who can know and trust their earthly parents, much less than heavenly father. We baptized Ezra in the ER, and with that remember that the promises were likewise true for us in our baptism. Our pastor visited and most importantly brought us the Eucharist, frequently. The blood of Christ sustains you. Indeed. Our own umbilical cord without which we would wither. At Ezras funeral, the pastor preached the Gospel. Nothing about the innocence of infants; no sentimentalizing about Hummel images. Rather, Ezra's death was horrific, but he was a sinner and we all deserve, and will experience, suffering. But he was baptized and united with Christ. Both the person of Christ and his work in great exchange. Christ kept the law perfectly and gave those merits to Ezra. Christ placed Ezras sin upon the cross. Christ sacrificed himself in Ezra's place. Christ communicated his benefits to Ezra, resurrection and eternal life granted. Christ forged both a forensic union, a real union with Ezra. Both suffered. Christ throughout his life and death, Ezra linked to this, over the span of a month. Although we couldn't feel it, God was there. He served us, served Ezra, and us each other. He spoke to us with his very voice. He sent his word, not only to give hope, but to create and sustain the faith necessary to live through the already until the not yet. How long oh Lord, how long?

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Chapter Nine The Next Day Today is Friday, the day to prepare Ezras funeral and burial tomorrow. We arrive at Cave Hill Cemetery in the morning. It's a historic nonprofit. It's old, beautiful. Much better than what we had envisioned. Would not have imagined that this would make any difference, but it does. We drive along to the offices, and cry. This is unreal, and yet somehow must be real. The nice environment helps. Rev. Lange chose it. We've put all of the details into his hands and for that we're grateful. Just couldn't have handled all the logistics. The cemetery is big, really big. Lange and a cemetery representative are waiting for us. The cemetery person explains all of the various options. All of this is new. Neither of us has buried anyone before. The options are meaningless. Just keep it simple. That concluded, we're off, to meet Lange at the funeral home later that afternoon. Lydia is at Melanie's parents and we have some time. We decide to have pictures at the funeral service and go to Wal-Mart to have them express printed. Lange had asked if we wanted anything in particular in the service. At a coffee shop waiting for the pictures we put together pieces of the service, scripture texts and hymns. This is so surreal. We might as well continue it as such. We decide to include the texts we read to Ezra, and those Lange read to us. A psalm where God takes care of us as sheep as we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. God promising to swallow up death and bring the nations up to his holy mountain in Isaiah. A psalm where God promises Christ's resurrection and that of his people. Paul's description of the Apocalypse. Christ's encounter with his disciples after his resurrection when they are distraught and he is hidden from them, explaining how the scriptures demand his suffering before death and resurrection, then revealing himself to them in bread and wine. Paul explaining the history of salvation, how sin and death entered into the world through Adam but how another man, the second Adam, has brought life and Resurrection, how this One has destroyed death and will come again to finish it off. Hymns too. One by Martin Luther, too crazy and esoteric for typical usage but we love. It tells the story of salvation. The pact between the Father and the Son to rescue us through suffering and death, Christ's victory on the field as the champion in our stead, the coming Return.
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Another hymn where those united with Christ's suffering, death and resurrection wait for his return. They wait to see Him, and those already dead, in glory when God finally lifts the veil of tears. We meet Lange at the funeral home. The funeral home personnel are nice but surrounded by polyester and Hummels and the professional trappings of the business of death. Do we want to wait to take care of other administrative issues? No, let's do them now and be done, please. We had wanted a simple wooden box, but they only have a plastic monstrosity, white with gold swirls. Infant death is so rare now, there is not much choice. Nonetheless a fitting form for this world. We send an email to friends and family about the funeral and include the link with Ezra's pictures and videos. Email out to the church members, kept abreast of the entire story throughout, now concluding. Another email to Lange, asking him to take these texts and hymns and use or discard them as he wishes, but to above all else, preach the Gospel. Not a homily about Ezra, but of Christ and union in suffering, death and resurrection. A silly memorial or celebration of life would be more than we can bear. The only thing that gives us hope is all this is Ezra's death serving as an event for God to clearly preach the Gospel. Lange would do this anyway, he always does. But he's gracious in accepting our ramblings. Also perhaps something on a phrase that we often thought about and spoke to each other. In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life. The medieval Roman Catholic church had a culture of death typified in a phase, in the midst of life, we are surrounded by death. A call to remind that death was always around the corner, hidden, even in the best of life. Martin Luther took it and changed it, tweaking a word that rhymes in the Latin. In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life. That is, even in our darkest and wellfounded blackness, there is eternal life all around us, hidden for now, but not for long. The funeral will be crazy. Its somewhat of a worry. Think wedding with divergent circles and all walks of life gather. But there's not much we can do. No time or effort to be spent. The day of the funeral brings family to our house, and then we drive to the church. Still unreal. There we display Ezra's pictures. It's like your life flashing before your eyes. Neighbors. Church members. Friends from nearby and from afar. Many we haven't seen in sometime. Some having been present throughout. All talking together. A funeral for a child is such a strange thing. Can't remember the last one we've even heard of.

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Melanie, rightfully, has us sit up front. Josh would rather slink to the back under some imaginary cover. But we have a different calling now. Suffering is a public affair. How will we react? Completely unknown. The service is Gospel. And that is strangely comforting. Its the only taste of calm we've felt for as long as we can remember. Surprising. Many people express great comfort at the service. Don't think it's just pleasantries. Perhaps the first time they've heard this crazy stuff we believe. And when push comes to shove, we hold to it. After Christ preached to his largest gatherings they turned away at the difficulty of his words. Asking his dearest disciples will you go to, one says, Lord, to whom else shall we go? Now we understand. That's not so much a heroic expression of allegiance but one that simply recognizes there is nothing else for us anywhere, anyway. This is all we have. To conceive of anything else is ridiculous, especially now. We are off and driving to the cemetery for the burial. A procession, following the hearse with a string of cars in train. It's cold, grey. Apparently you don't have to stop at stoplights. We're trying not to lose the train. We arrive. Remember, this is his body. This is not him. He is with Christ, away from all suffering and pain and right now in eternal celebration. And we will see him again. A tent around the grave. A ceremony, simply and short. And then the beginning of the rest of our lives. B' - Suffering and the World This chapter is not about getting better; its not about getting back to normal. Its not about moving through the twelve stages of grief or whatever current theory is popular. Its about living now that youve suffered profoundly. Its about understanding God in a different way. After all, I have no doubt that he loves me, but he was willing to let my infant son die. The precious gift that he gave, he took back to himself in a mere 32 days. Now what? Lord, please, not another f-ing day. How long will you delay? But until then, onto the mundane but meaningful. This world is both a slice of heaven and a hot steaming plate of hell. Its ongoing pain and suffering prompt the heavenly host to beg for its end, for Christ's return, when he sets all things right. Thats not to say you should only sit in grief and cry in the corner, but that moving through the twelve stages and getting back out on the road to normal is not the goal either. This world is not as it should be. To borrow Luthers description,
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its a hell, decorated with thorns and thistles. But it is also redeemed, through Christs suffering and he will come again to destroy it, then recreate it. Not long, not long, but soon. In the interim, we have no choice but to continue to live and participate in this world. In this transitional existence, we suffer and in the midst of suffering we continue to trust and keep faith. The simple, clear expressions of faith and trust in the midst of suffering. First, theres the actual event itself. Here, faith expresses itself in just getting out of bed in the face of it and living through it. Then there are the consequences or aftermath, the course you're now on as a result of it. Here faith is about handling the emotions and feelings, brutally painful and overwhelming, and the like. Finally there's the future. What's to say death wont visit us again tomorrow? Simply having plans and ideas for the future is an act of faith, an expression of hope. In the midst of this we profess a good God, even though we walk over bodies in the street. But this time its the body of our loved one. We continue to confess God as loving and merciful. He kept the law for us, offered himself as a sacrifice for us to satisfy his own holy demands. He unites us with this Suffering Servant, our redeemer. We continue to profess justification as objective fact and acknowledge that in our sanctification he unites us with Christ and likewise calls us to suffer. We try to thank God for his salvation by suffering with this Christ, and by serving him through serving our neighbors, especially as our neighbors suffer, even though we still are suffering. We know this suffering is part of this age, the already but not yet and that this is good in that the cosmic clocks still ticks and the gate remains open, the flaps up in the tent of celebration. We know that right now he holds the door open to safety and rest, and, for now, gathers his people from the nations. In the midst of our suffering we learn about God, or at least see some things more clearly. This God is kind and loving. But he is also the same God who did not spare his only son from suffering and abandonment. In fact, he made him a blood sacrifice. He is the good surgeon but precisely because of that he will not stop the procedure but will continue the cutting once he begins. That should scare the hell out of you; it does us. And he is also the same God who hides, and hides in suffering. He's hidden along with his comfort and the ultimate vindication of his plans, for now. So cowboy up; its not a skirmish but a war. On the other hand, and at the same time true, the battle has in fact already been won, its outcome certain as God will remove suffering and death and replace them with glory and eternal life, revealing himself openly in the next age. And so we live out our days in the in-between as a response. Our lives here profess this faith, both the reality of curse and suffering as
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well as the certain hope of consummation and recreation. On one hand, our days here are incredibly meaningful because of their place in this cosmic story and their reflection of our union with Christ. On the other hand, they are meaningless, vanity, grass that wilts, dust that scatters in the wind. So don't take them too seriously. Enjoy the good gifts of creation. Laugh if you can. We have little doubt that Ezra is laughing at us and our antics, this book included. And since we wont get to embarrass Ezra in the typical parent-teenager fashion, weve tried to embarrass him as much as possible here. That's the tension we feel here in this already but not yet. We are given good gifts and not only allowed to enjoy them, but are called to enjoy them. Family, friends, neighbors, food, music, film, literature, art, hobbies, wealth and the like. But we also have these on loan. All things come from Thee oh Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee, so reads a piece of a liturgy for the part of service where we offer money to God. But the sentiment applies to all good gifts, talents, skills, and even the enjoyment of the gifts that he gives us like family, friends and wealth. All are gifts of God that he may, and will, call back at any given time. And when he does, we will probably suffer. How tough it is to truly enjoy the gift of a child and yet be ready to give him back when called. In the parable, the rich man has a good harvest, builds more barns to store the goodness, then is content to live out his days in leisure; that night God takes him home, scolding him: You fool. He isn't foolish for being rich, but for failing to see wealth, or any good thing, as anything other than a gift of God, for denying God the right to unexpectedly call it back; for expecting God to do anything but. All things come from Thee, Oh Lord. Thats the easy part. Of Thine own, we give Thee. Thats where it gets tough. All that we have is from God, and we must offer it to him, despite the suffering it causes. Its a response, not of us giving God something, but returning a portion of what he has given us. In calling these things back, God forces us to recognize him as their source and keeps our gaze on him. Here he also allows us to participate in this part of sanctification, much in the same way we allow a two year old to 'help' us cook or clean. This isnt just for our possessions, but so too our relationships, our health; all that we have, body and soul. All things, ultimately, rot and spoil and our lives are transitory and short. You only live once, so swing for the fences. That doesnt necessarily mean start cliff diving, but rather use your time resources wisely and make the most of them. We use our gifts both in joy and in suffering. Joy from the gifts, suffering from the curse, union with Christ and the battle that brings between the Old and New Person. Even when we try and use these good gifts, to
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enjoy or to serve others, we will have a hard time, still persecuted by the flesh, the devil and the world. The world is broken, fractured, not yet as it should be. In a fallen world, ravaged by random and indiscriminate evil, things won't always work out, even with resources in hand. Like icebergs floating and blocking a ships path, there may not be a clear way. Like interlocking gears in a factory, one or two breaking may make it impossible to create and produce. Wheels within wheels of a fallen world means that there may be no good options, only the lesser of evils. You may have family to support you and money to pay the medical bills but its still a choice between the painful chemo or the cancer. This life is meaningful as its place to express love for God, through serving neighbor, but it is also transitory and any act of work and building is in some sense meaningless. This is part of being in the world but not of it. On one hand, God has removed you from the world. Your home is in heaven, in the world recreated. There is your treasure: all that Christ has earned for you. And in the age to come, God will never recall these good gifts. On the other hand, God has also placed you in this world, for now. Christ makes it pretty clear about placing us in this tension: in the world but not of it. When praying the high priestly prayer for his people, he is specific. Father they do not belong to the world but I do not pray that you would take them out of the world. Pilgrims and sojourners but certainly not vacationers, taking it easy. We are to remain in this world, even though we are not of it. In the world but not of it, that is a massive tension. Most religions pick one or the other. In the world is the more popular choice of late. Doing the social gospel, transforming the world into a heaven on earth, whether a democratic agenda of religious liberals or a republican platform of hard core evangelicals. Even theocracies, political societies built on alleged divine principles. The divine governance for ancient Israel applied to Christian theocracies, even now in the United States. Or Islamic law for other regimes. Not of the world is still an often selected option. Monks and hermits of any religion. Isolated, sitting on a prayer tower of in a cave, or anything but schlepping along in the mud and the blood and the beer with common society. Far away from the profane where Yahweh dwelt trudging through the sand or where Christ nestled in the animal filth stained manger, or laboring manually in the carpenters workshop. You can set up sacred societies outside the world. Quakers and Shakers set apart from contact with the modern, the common and the profane. Avoiding eating with the pagan tax collectors who skimmed profits from the people or the prostitutes fresh from applying their trade.
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For the Roman Catholics of Luther's day, remaining not of the world, at least for a select few, had a great logic in the economy of salvation. Remember the two systems of justification, the gavel and the beaker. The gavel is the divine declaration of the cosmic judge declaring you not guilty and perfectly worthy. The beaker, for Roman Catholics, was infusing or injecting your beaker-soul with the substance of grace. This substance was stored in a big tank which and continually filled by works of spiritual supermen. These monks earned enough grace that it overflowed and was stored in a reservoir, then applied to their neighbors. (There are technical Latin terms for these things, the syringes, beakers and tanks for those so inclined to look them up). In this system, the monks had the best of both worlds. They were not of this world but helped those who were in the world, by earning grace for the tank that would fill the beakers of the common folk. Luther broke with the entire system. He opted for the gavel and forensic justification, rather than the laboratory glassware that relied on sequestered monks to generate the substances. This meant, that these monks werent helping anyone. Instead, they were selfish and hypocritical. Selfish, in staying out of the world, the mud and the blood and the beer. Hypocritical, in thinking this helped their neighbors as opposed to common work of the allegedly lesser spiritual people, like doctors and lawyer and cowboys and such. In the world, but not of it. We are called to live in the common, the secular, the profane, the mud and blood and beer. We are called to live in the world, with spouse and family and jobs and taxes. God calls us to this world and all these things and, in this sense, sanctifies them. The pastor has a job and performs sacred work. But in a broader sense, God made all work meaningful, sacred by calling us to it and using it to serve him and neighbor through it. Neither performing surgery nor sweeping a floor is spiritually better, provided both are done to the glory of God. By that, we mean that both are done the fullness of your ability, both in line with your talents and disposition and desires, and done as response to your justification, both in an effort to serve your neighbor. You respond to your justification in this world by getting up every day and doing what you can to say thank you to the God of your salvation. But more than that, in doing your work, God actively uses you to serve others, giving little you a role in the grand cosmic story. You work, and that is the mask that God often wears. Where is God? Where is he in the midst of my child's suffering? God is there under the mask of the doctor, performing the surgery. God is not just there as the Great Physician healing the spiritual, but he is also there as the intern or
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resident on the 3:00 am shift, performing the rounds and the surgery. He is there as the first responder, the firefighter or the EMT. He is there wearing the mask of the janitor sweeping the floor, keeping the NICU clean and making it as hospitable as possible. God does not only call you to work in a job. He also calls you to work and serve as family member, as a friend, as a neighbor. And he uses all these, sanctifies them and wears them as masks when he serves us, having us participate in that service. He is there comforting us through the words of friends or through those taking turns reading to a sick child. He calls us to serve in these different offices at the same time. The janitor speaks the kind word and acts both in keeping the ER comfortable and as a neighbor. So too the surgeon. The firefights and EMTs and even the coroner, who did their jobs and helped Ezra and us as neighbors as much as they could but also spoke kind words of empathy. God came to us wearing them as masks, even if we didnt recognize him. These are vocations, all sacred, in that he calls you, in that he uses to serve and in that he causes you to participate in the divinely orchestrated unfolding of the cosmic story. God came to us under those he called to different jobs and as neighbors and family members. He also came to us under the office and roles of his Church. The pastor visiting and administering the sacraments to us. The laity expressing empathy. He called individuals as church members to remind us that we are not alone, that they share our suffering, that we play a collective role in the divine drama. God justifies us and causes us respond, calling us to serve in different roles, as family as neighbor, as church member. He uses all these offices to serve his people when they suffer, but also to provide them with joy. The loving wife and parent. But also the artist, the filmmaker, the author, the chef, the winemaker and the musician. Not Christian art or film, or literature or food or wine or music per se. But objectively good and beautiful art and food and music and wine. The choicest of meats, the finest of wines. The most beautiful of music and art and literature. If the arts in some way reflect the great cosmic story that reverberates though the universe, creation, fall, sacrifice atonement victory, requiem, well so much the better. It is good and tells us about this God who reveals through concealing. It may be the hero of the Tale of Two Cities doing a far better thing than he's ever done and going to a far better place than has even known though his substitutionary execution on the guillotine. Or it may even be where Donnie Darko, saves the universe through his... well it involves a rabbit suit and its admittedly crazy.

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Let's just leave it at its good whether the story reflects in high literature or even seeps into the silliest of pop culture. God sanctifies the work of the artist and author not just in general but even by using it to create images that point to different piece of the divine story. We are tempted to believe he is not there when we dont see him, but far from that he allows us to participate in this story and to serve as his agents and artists in executing and illustrating his divine drama. One of the authors illustrates this for us. A little hobbit complained that he didn't see any orchestrated plan or prophecy, and the wise wizard explains, on the contrary, surely he should believe precisely because hes participated as an agent in it's coming to pass. God calls us to these vocations, gives us specific roles in his narrative but even then we will not always meet success. In these roles we can still expect to be thwarted and frustrated as the thorns and thistles of this world choke. In any case, our vocations and efforts to work and to serve are all by the sweat of our brows. Executing your vocation, to the best of your ability, in serving neighbor and God, whether through office in work or family or in church even as laity, will be tough. It will be your cross. Your cross need not be lions and coliseums but can be, is more likely, the mundane. Dealing with the coworker, the family member, and even yourself. Precisely when you are confronted with an opportunity to serve, right at the point where God may come to your neighbor wearing you as his mask, its there you meet your Old Person. Faced with an opportunity to play a part in the divine drama, thats exactly what you dont want to do, but rather, the thing you know you shouldnt, well thats what you make for straight away. Its precisely in these acts, getting up and doing these things, participating in the mundane, especially when the world and yourself works against you, that God seizes an opportunity to cause you to express gratitude for salvation. Fortunately God does not judge on whether you meet earthly success, rather he may call you to try and yet fail. More fortunately still, these do not earn salvation but are merely your response to it, and the effort is not your own but rather him working through you. Participating in your calling, amidst the thorns and thistles, is an act of faith. Getting up out of bed, acting as if life has meaning when it doesnt feel that way, even when you don't see it is an act of faith. Assenting that this life is hell but that it is concentrated with meaning is a profession. So get out of bed and go to your tedious job and do good work even though no one cares or will notice or they will try and thwart you, even though your friends won't understand what youre doing and the government will tax you extra for it. Get up and go to your church even though youll be
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met with some dolt wearing a happy-clappy smile, completely unable to relate to your suffering, spouting an incantation or tritism at the first chance. So in spite of it all, do your callings well. And maybe if you're lucky (or just paying attention), he'll let you get a glimpse of your little part in the grand story. But don't count on it. Not yet. Simeon finally saw the Christ after years of longing but this is the exception, not the rule. And Simeon got only a glimpse, the Christ for but a moment as an infant, not Christs life or death or resurrection and certainly not his return for which we still wait thousands of years later. We're not responsible for the outcomes of our callings only for their faithful execution. In fact, we're told they won't be commensurate with our performance. Thats one of the lessons of Job. Were only responsible for doing our job in gratitude, whether were promoted or not, whether the church grows or not. Well done, good and faithful servant. Dont' see anyone else around? Church seems like it will fold? Everyone down at the Corner Community Commune of Communion? Don't worry, God has them hidden; thats what he tends to do with the faithful, even hidden from those he calls to proclaim his message, even to their despair. Thats one of the lessons of Elijah. God can do the miraculous, save us from the furnace. He can not only save us from suffering but could grant you wishes from the cosmic candy machine if he wanted. But thats not the way it works, for now. You shouldnt expect that. And when he doesnt deliver that, he is still God. But thats not fair. Indeed it is not. God is not fair, but just, and merciful. Not fair he had to bail us all out through sweat and blood. Still less fair that he credits us with Christs perfect score. Fairness, as one well known childrens author-theologian once said, is a concept brewed in hell. True when we see external rewards or penalties on earth as evidence as anyones righteousness or lack thereof; true when we compare our progress against others. Barring a payout from the cosmic candy machine, pray that maybe you can at least find irony and humor in it all. Humor has to be one of Gods most underappreciated gifts. Not just the laughs that can help ease pain. Those can indeed bring about some consolation, at least for the quirkiest personalities. We joke about stuff that would turn others white with horror, but it's a release. After Ezra died, we turned our attention back to our mundane work. Church members said they'd pray for us about that. A few days later a friend and coworker was diagnosed with something horrible, out of the blue, just like with Ezra. We joked that is was the same people who also prayed for
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Ezra. Maybe we should ask them to stop. Or even better yet, to pray for our enemies. Pretty easy to fulfill that mandate given these results. In poor taste, for us it was a helpful release. Humor helped us as we suffered and tried to enter back into our callings in the mundane world. So too did irony, and sense we were being mocked, well at least playfully teased for our benefit. Irony is sort of like the apologetic from evil, not traditional but helpful for us. I know there is evil, coordinated and particularly pointed towards me when I suffer, and so I know there must be some behind it, a devil, and if theres a devil then theres also a God. I know that there is irony, that I am being mocked. Things dont just break apart but do so in a specific way that lets me know there is not only a standard against which to compare what actually happens to what should be, but also a particular sense of the divine bleeding into the mundane and even using evil often to my particular dismay. The events of my life and the coincidences are not just the thistles and thorns, but someone arranges them in such a way that the spell my name. After Ezra died we slowly ventured back out into the world. First time out at a coffee shop, a coffee shop mind you whose clientele is predominantly teenage boys, we were all of a sudden surrounded by 3 babies, several conversations talking about newborns, and another conversation about planning a baby shower. Now when you are aware of something, you see it everywhere. But this experience was more than that. And it wasn't cause to be mad at God; it had passed that point and was now funny. He was letting us know he was aware of us and was in charge, but that our path back into the world would not be easy. Another example: first day back on the job, we met a new face, whose name was Ezra. God doesn't play at dice; nothing is just coincidence. It was as if a friend, who we knew and trusted, was cheering us up with a laugh. Or more like gently taunting us to pull us out of our introspective gaze. Do you really think that I don't know what's going on? Do you really think that I'm not in control? Some of the gloomy Danish old bald guys made technical books out of it. We use it as a practical help, a guide for ourselves and others. When a particular friend says that it feels as if there's someone working against him, I tell him that it's God, but I say it with a smile. God does the same thing to us, but even in spelling out our name in thistles and thorns, He reveals himself, and his mercy, through these everyday coincidences that thwart us. After a trauma it's integrating back with the mundane that is perhaps most painful. Leaving behind the cosmic toil or deep grief and having to enter
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back into the world. Trying to give a damn about something at work, listening to the church member prattle on and on. And facing it in public. Not just in the community of believers. But having to explain or address your suffering with the world. We wrote an email to coworkers to get things out on the table. That was easier than walking back in the doors. Certainly easier than dropping Lydia off at day care the first time when her teacher asked how the baby was doing. What do you say? They will find out sooner or later. When sad, we remind ourselves that Ezra did well, he ran the race that he was called to run. This part of his race is over and he can celebrate. And we can too. We remind ourselves that now it's our turn to do a good job, to trudge on, to finish this life. In that sense, our response isnt just to do well to make Ezra proud, but its a response to Christ. That is, we've been justified and now we trudge on through the daily battle. Christ trudged along in this mundane and suffered, and did a perfect job, before returning to heaven. We trudge on as response, not from mandate but gratitude. But we trudge on differently as acute suffering has changed us. Trial and fire makes reintegrating back with the world very difficult. Post traumatic stress is not just for the war veterans. To paraphrase the author of the a book about infant death, suffering breaks our mirror of God. You know, the looking glass in which we make him out in our own image. The broken glass shows us a more terrible image, a greater truth. God will allow the horrible to happen to you. For us, the broken glass of or funhouse mirror that we used to distort God forced us to look at him more clearly in the images that he gives us. These images show something much more wonderful. He will allow you to suffer but has already defeated suffering and its master death. You cant see it, here on this earth. On this earth, in this age, you clearly feel the suffering from the curse, from your union with Christ who calls you to suffer and as a characteristic of this age in which he keeps the cosmic gate open. That cosmic gate will close and then you will see clearly, without mirror or telescope. But in this interim, he calls you into back into the world to serve him as a response to your justification, through executing your vocations at work, as family, as neighbor and as part of the church. Believing this doesnt make it any easier. That integration back into the mundane remains terrible. In one theologians childrens story, the kids visit a magic land and have adventures and are kings and queens and face dragons and dangers. But then they are transported back to their real world and are regular children again, teased at school and trudging through mud puddles of gray England during the second World War.
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And having to live as stupid children when they are so much, when they have this other life and citizenship in another world that is so much more, this tension tears at them. The author gives us a picture of our experience as citizens of heaven, who remain in this earthly world but not of it. Down here, in the rain and the mud, it is an act of faith to get out of bed, to go to work, to kiss your spouse, to take your kids to the park. It is also an act of faith to make plans for the future in this world, especially knowing that God will call you to suffer. As for us, we'll try and have another child. Actually he or she is already in the womb. We do this not to replace Ezra, but as an act of faith. Surely we've been burned scarred, beaten, suffered. But for us, we see this as a confession of faith similar to profession of the three men who faced the furnace. God can save us from suffering and death, but if he doesnt he is still God. God did save them from that furnace, that time, on that particular occasion. But ultimately those men also suffered and died, like all under the curse. God didn't save us from our furnace. Ezra suffered and died, and so do we. Nevertheless God is still God, and a good God at that. You may not have a child die, but you will suffer. And when you do, you will suffer in public. God will call you back into the world and cause you to face it in your office as a worker, family member, neighbor and church member. And he will call you to serve in all these while you suffer. He will cause you to do so, but that wont make the experience any easier. You'll also look for confidence and hope and clarity. But in this fallen world there will be little at best. Plans change and certainty is but an illusion. For us, this was a great lesson with Ezra. At each stage, we thought that the future would bring answers, or at least some clarity. How bad is his brain damage? Is it just a little speech therapy or completely traumatic? We'll run some tests. What do the tests say? Well, theyre basically inconclusive; bad but we don't know how badly. The same thing, in so many ways, on and on and on. When you suffer, you will feel abandoned. For us, that wasnt just from an emotional experience from the pain or angst of the events themselves, or from not having God answer our prayers to make it stop and heal us, it was also from not having any clarity into the future. Its one thing to suffer events, another not even be able to make any plans for how you will carry on. There is no future. But its precisely in that moment that you have your greatest clarity. There never is any future. Not one that you can plan on anyway. God can send suffering, take his good gifts back at any time. Youre brought to your knees. There you either curse or trust. Passive neutrality is not an option. There will be no clear resolution, no specific answers or definite times or dates which to use as a crutch. The same
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thing holds true on the other side of Ezras death. When will we feel better, feel comforted? Oh, in time. Okay, when? Slowly. Okay, but better right? Well, actually maybe not better, just different. Okay how about that, when does that typically happen? We'll it's different for everyone. And so on and so on. That not knowing is the most difficult. Thats what brings you to your knees to curse or trust. Watchful waiting seems like a good thing until youre the one doing the waiting. The doctors go home and have dinner and their life carries on. But for you, there is no normal life to which to return, but only a sentence. Maybe the specific suffering you fear will fall on you, maybe not. Either way, a sword of Damocles hanging above your head. The tension of not knowing is a suffering in itself, one that could make finding the diagnose that you fear not as bad as the waiting. The not knowing is a suffering itself, one that reduces you to ashes by showing you your place in the cosmic scheme. You can do nothing, only accept. And even your that acceptance isn't a prerequisite of your fate. In that sense, it's a piece of the law, there is suffering and nothing your can do. Its also a piece of the Gospel. We have the same power and role in our salvation. There is nothing you can do. None of it depends on you but has already been done. Your suffering, real, has already been cured, this is the residual, the last bit that ends your bitter run with death and through which God unlocks your eternal bliss. Theres another interesting book on childrens suffering and death, a personal account of a father and the story of his severely disabled son. The boy has a rare condition that left him with the cognitive abilities of baby. Feeding tubes, inability to talk, limited mobility and in many ways very relatable to Ezra. The author shares this familys story, the relentless difficulties, the sacrifice and suffering, and decision after decision between one bad option and another bad option. It is a remarkable story of parents love for their child and I can only hope we wouldve acted with half their love and sacrifice had Ezra lived. The author wrestles with the meaning of his sons life and their suffering. They could have allowed him to die as infant, but they didn't and with that choice created a life of suffering for him and them. Why does this happen? What will the future hold? No clarity at all. But he tells the tale and wrestles with the potential answers. He is certain of one thing, that God did not call them to this. No God, agnostic at best. How could a loving God could allow this? And any of the Hummel collecting Christian folk who say so should spend one day, one single day in his shoes, and then see what they think. But he is called to wrestle with the idea. He rages at God a bit. Didnt the Medieval
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church and even Luther have barbaric things to say about the mentally ill? (Yes, they did, and they were absolutely wrong. But Gods opinion is not that of sinful people nor his religion impugned by our inanity.) In any case, even though not believing in him, the author wrestles with God. Suffering forces him to. It is ironic that he mentions Luther, a proxy for the theology of the great exchange and the good God as the one who suffers. Ultimately he must also wrestle with good in the midst of suffering. He sees his child develop and even gain confidence and experience joy. Something is going on here. We understand his rage and his frustration, not just at God, but especially at the Church. His experience has been one of incantations and tritisms, completely enraging to those who are suffering. Even the comments of the reviewers on Amazon make this point loud and clear. I'm so tired of those damn Christians saying that they are special because of this or that God has chosen them for it. Thank God, err whoever, that the author takes that head on. This is much less about a theological discussion as it is an emotional reaction, and a justified one at that. Also throw in the new age life coaches, the name and claim it and think it and achieve crowd and now you have a party. All hollow, all infuriating in the midst of suffering. The truth is in God as the suffering God. The one who allows evil, even dispense it as a curse, but turns it on its ear in the great exchange. The only meaningful picture we have of suffering and Gods role in the theology of the cross, when we look upon God pouring our sin and its eternal curse upon Christ, and God crediting Christs perfection to us and granting us its eternal benefits. The only thing that provides us clarity about our trek in this world is his revelation that he has already defeated suffering and death but that the victory and God's presence, still hidden. Not yet openly revealed in the destruction and recreation of the world. That is coming, but in this in-between, its suffering as long as the cosmic clock keeps ticking and the gate remains open. Suffering forces the author, you, us, everyone, to wrestle with God, whether you profess belief in him or not. Suffering forces you to your knees to either curse or to trust. That cosmic father figure we project, in suffering, becomes real, necessary. Our personal response to this suffering is also rage. Rage at our own sin, at our making the world such, at our condition causing God to suffer for us, at having to stomach the mundane, at having to patiently to endure. But actually, its more defiance. Defiant belief. The fist raised on the Olympic stand, the Che Guevara t-shirt. If were going to have to trudge on in this world, we might as well go all in, make it a spectacle even. We
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believe because it is absurd. Lord, to whom else shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Where is your sting, oh death; where is your victory, oh grave? That's engraved on the marker that lies upon Ezras grave along with his birth dates, and the quotation from Luther. In the midst of death we are surrounded by life. We acknowledge and profess the objective truth of this eternal life, even though its currently hidden by death. And where is your sting death? Well it should be abundantly clear on the grave stone of a baby. But we're taunting it and mocking it. Yes we're walking over dead bodies in the streets but this is indeed the best of all possible worlds. Yes God could have saved us from this furnace, but he didn't and yet he's still God, and a good one at that. And yes the grave has claimed Ezra and its sting is pointed and public, but ain't no grave can hold his body down, and despite the absolutely horrific experience and all the visible, tangible evidence to the contrary, death you are defeated. And even with tears, we'll taunt you to your face. Other approaches may be better for other people. It could just be the Germanic blood and the bourbon and cigars talking The medieval churchs slogan: In the midst of life, we are surrounded by death. That is, our life is short and nasty and brutal, soon doomed. (It rhymes better in Latin, and yes we're aware this isn't the classic English translation but feel it better renders the sense of the force, check out the big fat Latin dictionary, not the little graduate school one, and look beyond the first entry, youll find it, it's there.) Luther took this and tweaked the Latin. In the midst of death, we're surrounded by life. That is death is the defining human experience that pervades all our activities. To paraphrase, this world is a hell or maybe worse. But in the midst of that obvious suffering, hidden, we are surrounded by eternal life. This is our cross, to profess this truth in the midst of suffering, to carry on living in the already and not yet. But that tension will be resolved. All of history has been leading up to it, and although it may be thousands of years away we are in the last days and stand at the end of time, the days are short for those to enter but the cosmic gate remains open. We are in the last epoch. We wait only on the last tree. So back to the Garden for one last story of three trees. With the tree of the knowledge of good and evil the human race fell. The tree of eternal life was locked away behind flaming swords, lest we confirm ourselves in this horrid state for all eternality. We have already seen the next tree with the cross, the tree cut into an instrument of torture. This tree saw the curse of God rain down and on it hung the sacrifice that brought our redemption. Finally, and soon, the tree of eternal life. At Christs return,
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the flaming swords that seal it away will fall into their sheaths. Through death we are perfected, the Old Person dies and the New Person remains and gains access to this tree. Each tree sits on its mountain and each has its fruit. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil sat on Mt. Eden. Four rivers flowed down from Eden, indicating its status as mountain, recreated in the unauthorized lesser form as the ziggurats and pyramids that dot the land and the myths as the high places where God dwells. Its fruit was a type of reverse sacrament; eating it brought not blessing but curse. The tree of the cross stood on Jerusalem, a city on the hill literally as well as figuratively. And within Jerusalem, specifically on Mt. Golgotha, the hill of the skull where Christ sacrificed himself. Its fruit is the blood of Christ joined to the fruit of the vine and on it we now feast, the good stuff, the best of wines. Finally, the tree of eternal life sits on the heavenly mountain pictured in Isaiah, Har Maggedon. The mountain where God swallows up death leads the nations in a conquered train to a heavenly tent of celebration. At Christs return, the fruit of the tree of eternal life will confirm us in this state of perfection for all eternity. On this mountain he will have his people celebrate a feast with its fruit, the best of meats and best wines, in the real city on the hill, the New Jerusalem upon which the little earthly model was based. On the day of that feast the heavenly celebration begins, and the flaps to the celestial tent of feasting close. Then we will no longer be in the midst of death and surrounded by eternal life, but only surrounded by eternal life. The cosmic clock stops ticking and strikes midnight and the gate shuts. Time is sharpening as things grind to a fine point. One theologian gives us a picture in his science fiction. Merlin, an old druid explains that things were much looser in ages past but are now grinding to a fine edge as we march towards requiem. The ancient historians spoke of oracles that once prophesied but fell silent at Christs first invasion. To paraphrase Paul as he reasons with the philosophers in the Greek forum, you worship an unknown God and while in the past he patiently bore this he has now revealed to you his name, Christ who was crucified. God is hidden. He conceals himself but he also reveals himself. He has been progressively revealing himself throughout all of holy history in the images and pictures he give us, as well in the historical events in which he participates. This is most clear in the person and work of Christ and his promises to return and bring all things to an end, to finish the cosmic story. The flip side of this revealing is that being aware that things are drawing to a close means that you are aware that you, one way or another, will play a part in the drama as the story ends and God reveals himself at the consummation.
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Weve been playing parts in this story all along. Things have been changing and sharpening all throughout. In some way, Satan seemed to have a seat at the holy council early on. He is there in Job, taunting God. But with Christ's advent, Satan falls like lighting form the sky and we hear no more of this. With Christs invasion, he defeats Satan and we see Satan only as the dragon chained to the pit. At Christs return, Christ pushes Satan into that pit to consume him along with his anti-trinity with the beast and the whore. Then we will be restored, not only as creatures with resurrected bodies, but restored into the image of God, not longer shattered and tattered. With death, we take off the Old Person and the image of Satan that we had put on. And with the resurrection our bodies are reunited with our souls and confirmed in perfection, in this image of God for all eternity, wearing the gleaming white robes of Christs perfection. The final tree with final fruit on the holy mountain of God (Har Magaddon, i.e. Armageddon) is coming soon. That is where we pass from justification, through the tensions of sanctification to perfection, to be eternally confirmed in Christs perfection. On that day we will be reunited with our bodies as they rise from the grave. In the words of Professor Cash, Ain't no grave can hold my body down. On that day the clock spins backwards and the earth will no longer groan, force fed the corpses of its creature kings and governors. Recreation. No more thorns and thistles. Not playing harps and hanging out. But work, meaningful with fulfilling. Worship, not Chuck E Cheese. But the sounds of the angels and saints singing, Holy, holy, holy. Family, not bickering but united in perfection. All of this together. Feasting, at the table of the covenant meal on the fruit of eternal life with Adam, Moses, David, Paul and Ezra. At that point the turn, the transition, from the church under the cross to the church triumphant. God vindicated. His people vindicated. The final, utter, eternal destruction of death and Satan. Our longing for justice fulfilled. But for now, patient endurance. The saints in heaven cry out, How long, oh Lord, how long? The heavenly hosts of angels take up this refrain. Christ, stirred, has cried out with the same, now moved, begins his Requiem. We will suffer, we will die, and we'll join the heavenly song. How long, oh Lord how long. And while the gate remains open we'll sing. Come, Lord Jesus.

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Chapter Ten The Day After We are at home, Melanie, Josh and Lydia. Alone. The house is empty. Lydia is indefatigable and keeps us moving, will keep us getting out of bed. Everyone speaks of comfort, comfort of faith, comfort that time will bring. But that is not our experience. Far from it. It's a distinct lack of comfort that we feel. Nothing stops. The same situation, sorrow and grief of death, goes on. Day after day. Church members had asked how they can continue to help. Prayer, and, if youre going to bring something, booze. Only an elderly woman complies. Jack Daniels. Widows understand suffering better than most. We turn to reading, books from people with similar experiences, books on theology and suffering. It turns out that our experience is not outside the norm. It's the complete lack of comfort that is such a central part of suffering. Suffering is being alone, feeling God shut the door and bolt it from the other side. Christ's words on the cross, My God, my God why have you forsaken me? make sense in a new way. That's not just about God forsaking him and pouring out his wrath upon Christ for the satisfaction of our sins, but Christ's emotional experience of suffering and death. And not just his. He's quoting a psalm that expresses the same feelings of those who suffer, of us. Why do we suffer? What does it mean? When will it stop? What will the future bring? Spent years studying the esoteric bits of theology and history of the Christian church on the subject. Only now wrestling with it in a real way for the first time. We read, we talk about it. We should write about our experience and whatever conclusions we find. A book. It's not the immediate time after a tragedy that you feel alone. Then, people pour around you. It's after. The long slow days that follow, one after another. The tyranny of expected recovery. But to us, the goal isn't to recover or become better. Rather, the world is fallen and death is its curse. Famous French theologian described it as men in a dungeon, chained to each other, one dying after the next. Your turn will soon come. No five-step recovery in that. Luther had even more severe things to say. The only thing that can help is a complete
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destruction of death and a literal recreation of the world. It's there our hope lies. We send gifts and cards to all those that have helped. Cookies to the NICU doctors and nurses. Flowers to the U of L therapists, distraught. Suffering is something you share, it's public; those with empathy participate in it. And your job is to comfort others, even in the midst of your suffering. Surprisingly that's the thing that brings the most comfort to us. Not comfort, that's the wrong word, but something like it, redeeming the suffering by helping others. Had not so clearly understood this piece of it. Christ does this as he suffers. Not just Father, forgive them but also Woman, this is your son; make sure you take care of her. All this makes much more sense. Melanie has a huge supply of breast milk stored and frozen. A friend helps us arrange to give it to a mom who adopted a child. She writes a nice blog post about it and people wonder. An excruciating experience in its own right. On one hand curse and despair. Literally having to give away the nourishment that would sustain Ezras life, now that his life was gone. On the other hand, at least this nourishment would not go to waste, but would sustain another little boy. And who knows, maybe when this boy grows up, he will come to know the hidden God who provided milk for him, even through strangers. In a very small way, an attempt to turn evil on its ear and redeem it with good. A tiny picture of the great cosmic story. We arrange a grave marker. Ezra's name, dates of birth and death, and the Luther quote, In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life. Along with another quote, from Paul. Oh, Death where is your sting? Oh, Grave where is your victory? Here Paul mocks death and its end. Despite the clear work of death claiming those to its grave, it is in fact broken and bound, soon to end. We'll stand defiant. This is completely out of odds with the other gravestones with flowers and halos and cupids. Anyone seeing the dates marking an infant's death taunting death with these words will hopefully wonder. Surely this is foolishness. It's so obviously the opposite? No. In the midst of this obvious curse death is bound and broken. Life surrounds, though hidden for now. Far from the silliness and utter absurdity of the Christian claim being a stumbling block, it's the reason we believe. I believe because it is absurd, a quip from an ancient theologian now makes sense. We ease back into work and people are gracious. Now we begin to face the public. Company-wide email making public what so many know. Friends at work are immensely helpful. They arrange a park bench in Lydia's favorite park. Same words on the plaque that mark his grave. They bring a petting zoo to the house one Saturday for Lydia and
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neighborhood kids. Same day we were giving Melanie's milk to the milk mommy. We go to church, and cry. Not the typical tears but here under the preaching of the Gospel and at the Communion rail is the only place we have any solace, any place to take a deep sigh. Singing is tough, the experiences of professing joy is so out of sorts still. Work and everything else no seems so meaningless. Getting back to life was the first transition, eventually we have another where we have to care again. What are the options? A cabin in the in Alaska wilderness biding our days until death and reunion? It has a certain appeal. Everything else seems so utterly pointless. Just get out of the world. But that phrase, about being in the world but not of it rings in our ears. For some reason we're supposed to stay and participate in the mundane daily existence. Luther and others had said that God works through this mundane-ness, the lowly milkmaid is how God milks, the farmer how he grows food, the doctor how he heals. We begin to understand this isn't so much about the dignity of work as it is the meaning that God creates in the midst of this daily drudge, even if the individual experience is out of sync with the cosmic reality. Then there's the mockery. First time out at a coffee shop, Melanie is surrounded by newborn moms and baby boys all going on and on. First time on conference call at work, Josh is introduced to the potential partner, named Ezra. Breath deep. Later, Josh will fill in for Rev. Lange and teach Sunday school. The subject? The book of Ezra. Sure, hell stand up in public and talk about Ezra the high priest, exile from the land, return to the temple, delayed promises, Christ in a vision crying out, How long? It doesn't hurt, it's funny. One theologian said irony and mockery is how one knows there's a God (admittedly, a funny argument). For us, its God arranging events to poke us. To say, come on, do you seriously think Im not paying attention that I don't know what's going on, that I, the Creator of the Universe, see this as beyond my control? A firefight runs up to Josh at the grocery store. Is something wrong? A flashback. No, it's one who was there with Ezra. He explains that they received the card of Ezra with the quote Surrounded by life. Both are moved, don't know what to say. What can you; except thank him? Same thing with a NICU nurse at another store with Melanie a little later. One of our dearest neighbors, has cancer again and a surgery that requires her to use the exact same feeding tube and suction machines as Ezra. Stops us in our tracks, but we can help navigate the mechanics practiced during late lonely nights.
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We signed up to email distributions lists from groups of parents with children like Ezra. We still receive these emails, almost daily. Others stories are still going on all around us. We'll put together a scholarship for seminary students in Ezra's name. Small, but enough to help buy books for students, and selection will be around the theology of the cross. Rev. Lange, his wife Krista and her father, a professor at the seminary, are extraordinarily helpful. One of the unexpected, and more difficult, pieces of suffering is the not just the pain of what is, but the loss of what isn't, never perhaps as prominent as with the death of an infant. Not just the loss of Ezra today, but of tomorrow and the day after. Ezra at six months, at two years, at ten, and as an adult. We were going to be so happy. Not just the pain of the instance, but the loss of potential. The loss of what could be, on this earth. Our loss is irrevocable, part of the curse. For Ezra, no doubt a boon. Our loss is his gain. The loss of pain and suffering, the imputation of eternal righteousness and glory. He will never experience childhood, but is perhaps his true age. As one theologian describes death and resurrection where both kids and elderly wake up as their true age. Early adulthood is a picture. For the children, how they should be when developed as part of perfection; for the elderly the loss of aches and pains and a return to youth. Another image is a fountain, not just a fountain of eternal youth but eternal life. We get serious about a book. We've sifted through theology, through literature, through pop culture and its movies and music, both for ourselves and solace but now with an eye to putting things together in a book. And in doing so it keeps us from going insane. There's so little stuff out there. Nothing that spoke to us in any meaningful way. Maybe it could help others. Something about the experience. No one ever tells you that in suffering you will feel so utterly without comfort. And it turns out that's typical, and even the way that suffering should feel. God is hidden, veiled, not in glory, but weak and himself suffered on the cross. That theology of glory vs. theology of the cross debate between Luther and his adversaries now makes sense. It's not just about justification, how a sinner stands before a holy God. Definitely not about how God helps you be better than the next guy and then calls it good enough. Its about how he keeps the law entirely in your place, plays the penalty for your sin entirely on the cross, and credits you with absolute perfection demonstrated by a Resurrection that you will share. But it's also about the very nature of God and how he reveals himself in accomplishing this justification. Not in gilded halls but in a dung-stained wooden box. Not in the pomp of courtly trumpets but with the cries and shrieks of torture

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upon the cross. Not winking at sin, so against his nature, but solving it through blood sacrifice. But why suffer at all? Couldn't it be some other way? It's a consequence of sin and the fall, the free will of the one man Adam. But rather than overlooking it, God destroys it, only through his own suffering in Christ. If we're to be united with him in glory we should expect to be united with him in suffering. United in a life of suffering, death and then, and only then, Resurrection and glory. Whereas Christ's suffering earns redemption, Ezra's and ours is a characteristic of this age in which God keeps the gate open, the flaps of the tent up in which the cosmic celebration is held. This tries the patience of the saints, on heaven and on earth, they cry, how long, oh Lord. It will end soon, and the door will close. But every day we suffer is another day in which God calls in the nations, their trail streaming up to the mountain where on that day death is fully destroyed, its sting and victory clearly defeated, obviously, not hidden. At the end of the day, God didn't save Ezra from death but allowed him to suffer here and suffer greatly. Us too. God could have saved us all from this. Could have, so easily. But he chose not to. Back to the story of the three Hebrews facing the furnace at the hands of an evil king in a foreign land. Exiled to Babylon but refusing to recant, they explained. God can save us from this furnace should he choose, but even if he doesn't he is still God. Absurdly, it makes sense to us now. Lord to whom else shall we go? We decide to try and have another child. He or she is already here. Despite the fear it brings we will try. There are circles of faith for us. The tragedy itself then its immediate aftermath, just getting up out of bed. Then the consequences and living in its aftermath, trudging on. Then taking the next step and having hope for the future, making plans despite the very real risk that something similar, or something else entirely different but equally tragic, can really happen. The tragedy teaches you that God won't protect you from pain and suffering, but that he is God nonetheless, even should we see the inside of the furnace. Sometimes we're discouraged. What if this doesn't all work out for our good? It seems so farfetched. But it's actually quite the opposite. We don't believe enough, aren't capable of even understanding how this all works out. The risk is not that we think too highly of God and his plan but that we cannot even comprehend it of that we dont trust it enough. Our suffering, the pain and loss of Ezra, is but a small piece in the cosmic story, a part of the interim delaying the requiem. Ezras death and suffering has more meaning than we can comprehend, it's a piece of the age in which the God of the universe forbears his reckoning, trying the
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patience of the cosmic host of Christ, his angels and saints, to their core, but one that keeps the flaps of his tent open. One in which he calls his people to protection from the wind and the dust and into music and dance and feasting. Sometimes it seems as if there shouldn't be such a great chasm. Surely there should be some more contact between this side and the other, but the chasm between our sin and Ezras perfection divides us as does the gap between this age and the next. Perhaps that's part of suffering as well, that utter lack of comfort, the lack of contact that drives folks to witches and sances. This is also part of that hiddenness of God. In the midst of such obvious death, we are quietly, subtly but truly surrounded by that hidden life. This life is devoid of Ezras presence. He, along with so many of God's comforts and revelations, is hidden. But we'll see him soon enough, this life is but a blip. Then again, none of this may help anybody who reads it, but merely confirm that we are completely insane. Of course that won't be such a leap to those who know us. Nonetheless it's helped us. And even if it's unread and despised as dark, masochistic, fundamentalist or whatever else, let it be Ezra's testimony before humanity and God, before angels and demons. We'll soon see what he has to say about it. He'll probably be embarrassed. It will be good for a laugh if nothing else. A laugh and perhaps a break from his song and ours: How long, oh Lord, how long? A' - A Conclusion Further reflections after some time has passed: Ezra was something else. He nearly died how many times? 15, 20, we lost count by the end. I saw him turn blue so many times in my lighter moments, I can think of him as my little smurf and at least crack a smile. But most of the time, I just cry. It must have been so painful, so scary. He couldnt use his vocal cords. We never got to hear him cry and I wonder what his voice wouldve sounded like. At the end, his numbers would fall, he would go through an episode of dying, there would be a pause and he would let out a gasp, a cry of sorts as digging deep within himself to find one more breath and pushing that breath out so fast and furious that it forced his vocal cords to respond. Thats the one thing that troubles me deeply. From literally the moment he left the womb, death was knocking at the door constantly, always one missed breath away. Constantly knocking, never a break. I wish he could have had more time in peace. My memories are so vivid of his birth. He
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was making his way out just fine and it was very early in the morning. We were going to have the rest of the day to relax and settle in to our new life together. Peace. But everything changed in an instant, and we never got to enjoy that day of peace. From that moment on, he was being worked on chest pounded, tubes inserted, sensors attached. The constant beeping of machines, the schedule of this next test or procedure, the steady stream of bad news. There was no peace. I wonder how it felt to almost die so many times. We spent all of our waking moments and most of our sleeping ones too, praying that Ezra would live. He had his really bad, code blue episode at the hospital and they said he might have 48 hours to live. But the next day he was better than ever. Alert, moving, as if to say, lets get out of here. So we did. We did the paperwork, got the equipment wed need to take care of him and we were on our way. We had such a strong sense of hope and a plan. Everything was finally in place to start him on alternative therapies and there were accounts of these working wonders on even infants like Ezra. And most importantly, we were all home. We would figure this out and make a good life for ourselves. It would be hard, very hard, but good. I like to think our time at home was a lifetime compressed into a week. I think Ezra experienced it all. He had good days and he had bad days. And at some point it was just bad days, and then really bad days. And we went through so many of the same episodes. Heart rate and oxygen saturation would begin dropping and dropping and dropping. His lips would turn blue, veins would start to show under his skin and towards the end, he would writhe in pain. And we were standing there beside Ezra, trying to comfort him, completely unknowing if this would be the last time or not. We had our death speech down to an art. Toastmasters Intl wouldve have been proud. I like to think by the end he was cursing us under his breath, telling us to shut up and think of something different to say. And then at some point in time, after all the near death episodes and seeing him writhe in pain, we stopped praying for Ezra to live and started praying that he would die. We prayed that he would have the courage to die and that moment will forever be the worst moment of my life. Praying that Ezra would die was awful but we had to do it. It was clear that this home was no longer his, he needed to go to his heavenly home. And so we prayed that he would go home, that Christ would keep his promises to Ezra in both life and in death, and that he would not be afraid. And it was awful to pray that prayer. The most helpful thing Rev. Lange ever said to us was that the reassurances we gave Ezra, that he would not be forsaken, that those
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promises were true for us too. So, although it didnt feel that way, we believed it and held on to those promises for dear life. We held Ezra constantly. We only put him down to suction out his throat or change the diaper. Sometimes we also put him down to let his neck rest. Ezra slept on mommas chest at night. I so hoped that my heart beat would help regulate his. In the end it didnt, but I wouldnt trade those nights of cuddling up for anything. And dadda and sister were right beside us at night too. We made the most of every minute we had with him. Except the night before he died. I put him in a little swaddle of blankets between us. Not sure why. But I think he needed time alone, just Ezra and his maker The nurses all loved his name. They said Lydia and Ezra sounded like a little old couple. I smile every time I think of it. And I agree, he has a great name. Lydia always called him baby Eh and she knows exactly who he is. Shell point to Ezras pictures on the wall and every once in a while, want to get out his scrapbook. Shes worked her way up to another syllable, and now hes baby ehrza. Its funny. Death can be constantly knocking at the door, and yet you still can be ignorant of its coming. We had ordered an ink kit to get Ezras footprints. A couple of days had gone by and I kept saying I was going to get it done. And finally, I took his footprints literally two hours before he died. Somehow the thought never entered my mind, that he might die before I got around to footprinting him. I guess the mind and the heart are funny things sometimes. Ezras footprints are dark and well outlined. Lydias are light and missing in places. Ezra was still, halfway in this world and halfway in the next while Lydia was moving, wriggling, kicking full of energy for the life ahead. Every time I glance at his footprints I am a little sad. Ezras eyes changed color while he was on the cooling treatment. He was born with the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen. Bright as in young, energetic, excited. When he came off the cooling treatment, his eyes were a deep slate blueit was if his eyes had aged like fine wine. I like to think Ezras eyes were a window into his soul. That he went from an infant to a wise old man in a matter of days, and that that maturity of soul served him well in preparation for death. I still shudder when I look at our pictures from Christmas 2010. We were getting excited about Ezras arrival. I vividly remember taking our family Christmas picture, just the three of us, and knowing this would be the last holiday as 3. When Easter rolled around we would be 4. It never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that reality might be different. By Easter
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he had already come and gone, and we were now 3 with one missing. Nave and unappreciative I guess. I feel sad for us when I look at those pictures. We were about to run into a buzz saw and had no idea, not even an inkling. Its the one time when I feel a twinge of anger at God. It feels especially cruel somehow. Lydia had been in a pretty good pattern of sleeping but soon after Ezra died, she returned to her 11 pm bedtime. And we just couldnt marshal the energy and willpower to spend an hour trying to get her to bed. No one tells you that grief is exhausting in a way that not even the longest marathon is. Therein started the night night ride. We would all get in the car and drive around the 264 loop at night. Sitting in the car was easier than chasing her and the movement and hum seemed to help her go to sleep. Dadda had the best joke ever. Lydia would want more crackers, then more water, then different crackers, then a different water cup, etc. and Dadda would say that he was running an in-flight snack service. I still laugh at that one. Everyone warned us that losing an infant was followed by exceptionally high rates of divorce. Our night night rides turned out to be free marriage counseling. Im sure Lydia will send us a bill at some point for the idea. In the midst of the in-flight snack service, while dodging all the NASCAR-inspired drivers, and through the never-ending construction on 264, we talked for at least an hour every night. And thats basically how we ended up writing this book. We would talk and take notes and somehow that helped us work through everything together. It kept us on the same page through all the crushing grief and despair. And we also held hands on our night night rides. Its a lot harder to scream at someone when youre holding their hand (and when youre operating an in-flight snack service). All told, I think the night, night rides kept our fighting to a minimum and probably saved us lots of agony and heartache. We just got a puppy for Lydia. Since were so clever, we told her that having a dog meant you needed to make sacrifices and stay home with the dog instead of going on night night rides. Shes fine with that, except now were back to going to bed at 11 pm. Either way, she wins :-) During one of these night night rides we drove into a tornado. Literally a block from it, the one that tore apart Churchill Downs. Would have been a fitting way to go, funny even. After Ezra had his code blue episode at the hospital, I would have these conversations in my head, wondering which would be a worse future -114

seeing him severely disabled and probably in some level of continuous pain or seeing only his gravestone. Imagining his gravestone was always worse, much worse. But we didnt have any illusions about a severely disabled life either. In researching alternative treatments online, wed read plenty of accounts about the struggles and sometimes horror of just getting by day by day. But we felt good about it, wed worked through our fears and had a plan. We were going to move to a farm and we would have a difficult life but a happy one. Ezra would get plenty of fresh air, peace, calm and animals to amuse him. There is dignity and wonder in life, in lives that are perfectly healthy and in lives that are severely disabled. We are all created in the image of God, and carry with us the Imago Dei as they call it. Its not something to be taken lightly. We did everything we could to give Ezra life and we brought him home from the hospital with that in mind. We didnt bring him home to die, we brought him home to live. We signed the do-not resuscitate order after his particularly bad code blue at the hospital. We knew at some point his brain had to be able to regulate your heart in order to sustain your life. There was nothing else the doctors could do. But even after we signed the DNR, we still had hope, incredible hope that Ezra would live. In some ways there is a veneer of us getting back to our lives. But its not that way at all. Every day is awful, in its own special way. We are fractured, we are broken in a way that will not heal because he is gone. But all the while, weve still been given responsibilities and callings to carry out so we must do well and remain patient (it sucks). But all in all, we will see him again soon and I cant wait. Another of the worst moments was waking up in middle of night and trying to figure out where Ezra was. Was he in the hospital, on the changing table ready to be suctioned out, or with dada and then realizing that none of the above was true. Ezra was gone. And then feeling the same way about Lydia. Constantly afraid that she was going to die in her sleep. There were two very distinct moments when the feeling of comfort of consolation was present and clear. Both times I was driving and can remember where I was on the highway each time. It was probably 10 weeks or so after Ezra died and I was driving by myself, listening to the Psalms. Two specific moments of comfort. Psalm 22 and Psalm 139. Theyre not often seen as texts of comfort, but they did the trick. Look them up and read them slowly out loud. 115

A word about the participants:

Lydia Funny, social, playful, difficult to get to sleep. Wonderful. Named for the Lydia of the early Christian church, patron and benefactor of it when it was a religion of slaves and women. Middle name is Athanasia, feminine for theologian Athanasius of the Trinitarian and Christological theology of the early Christian creeds. A year and a half old when we had her baby brother Ezra. She was greatly affected by the schedule mostly, but was fantastic when we brought Ezra home for a few days before he died. You never know how a sibling will react to their new sibling in general, much less in this situation, stressed and with Ezra's feeding tubes and equipment. But she was wonderful, playing with him, looking after him and loving him right from the start. She knew something was different. And when he died, she knew. Nite nite baby Ehe. And we have a catechistical liturgy for this. That's right, night, night. He went home. Where is he now? In hevhen. That's right. And who's he with? Jeesus. That's right. And some day momma and dada will join him (dada first if youre a betting man) and then one day Lydia will join us all there too. Even now she see his picture, and looking through his little book, she says, baby eh, nite nite. Pastor Lange and his better half Krista are Lydias baptismal sponsors, just as they are Ezra's. Melanie Melanie is a small town Indiana farm girl who led her high school basketball team to the state finals (back when it was a Hoosiersstyle open tournament). She went to Yale, hung out, Cyril O-Regan and Edward Tufte and some other folks, then started working back in her home town before meeting Josh, her most wonderful life changing event (note: Josh is writing this part). Josh negotiated a suitable dowry (mixed livestock and the like) and they were married in Arizona where she worked in venture capital in Arizona where Josh was doing a PhD. Then moved to Portland, Maine where she helped build a disease management company (health care stuff). Moving to Louisville closer to her family and farm (Louisville is actually close to Indiana for those not familiar, Josh wasn't). Then she, Josh and Burak, their friend and business partner, founded a start up in health care, messed around with the Google the
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great as they were just getting into the field, and then sold their start up to a healthcare technology company in Boston, where they went back and forth from Louisville. During this time they had Lydia. Melanie means stormy unrest or something similar in Greek and her maiden last name, Unrue, means the opposite of quiet and tranquility. Josh likes to tease her that those are both apt descriptions, but thats really not the case. She was raised as a Methodist, did a stint as a Calvinist with Josh, and both ended up Lutheran, in which church Lydia was born into and baptized. Obviously, Melanie is much more psychologically and socially balanced than Josh, but shes also the brains too. Josh is just the pretty face (again, this is now Josh writing). Josh Religious Studies and languages at a Lutheran undergrad. A Masters in Reformation Theology at the same place with a rotating faculty that include Trygve Skarsten, James Kittleson, George Forrell and others. Then another masters at a Reformed seminary working on languages and Ancient Near Eastern studies with Meredith Kline, before beginning a PhD with Heiko Oberman. Oberman's students are chairs of history at Harvard, Duke, Princeton and other places. One of his students is the famous, or infamous depending on your take, Elaine Pagels of Gnostic Gospel fame. Oberman ran an institute in Germany where then Cardinal Ratizinger taught and the two co-taught courses on the reformation. Oberman was one of the handful of Protestant Observers at Vatican II. He was the consummate Luther scholar of the last century most would acknowledge. He was masterful, playful and feisty, creating his share of enemies, all things that Josh admired about him. His book on Luther won Book of the Decade in Germany and the Heineken Prize, European equivalent of a Pulitzer for history (but unfortunately is did not come with a lifetime supply of the beer). Oberman: three dozen books, editing the critical edition of Luthers Works in the original languages and the like. More importantly, a pastor and mentor, who taught Josh the art of dying well: dying in faith. Ezra bears the name Augustinus, not just for Augustine the theologian but because it too was Heiko's middle name. Oberman died before Josh completed his PhD, but Oberman graciously arranged from Josh to be looked after by the director of the applied school for advanced studies (EPHE) at the Sorbonne (sort of an interdisciplinary think tank like IAS in Princeton of Einstein fame, but the Sorbonnes was the model as the French would point out, and they do point things like that out. Dont even get them started on how the American Revolution was just a little English civil war, not to be compared to the French Revolution). Every grad student lives in mortal fear of their advisor dying as it basically kills your own career. But at Obermans death Josh mostly just missed him, not the scholar but the man, to the point where the field itself became meaningless, and Josh had
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great difficulty integrating back into it. He became interested in other things and while concluding the Fulbright studies at the institute, he moved onto things like psychology and theories of decision making and behavior change, then its data and quantifying qualitative and the like. Working with Melanie and Burak, he started applying some of these things in health care before founding a start up with them then successfully selling it. He's spoken at SXSW music, film and interaction festival in Austin, TX and government healthcare data initiative summits in DC (Department of Health and Human Services, Institute of Medicine, National Academies, etc.) and MITs Entrepreneurship Center. Josh is crazy, a bit of a performer, a circus bear. This Book This book was largely written at 11pm at night, on nite-nite drives without which our not-quite-two-year-old just couldn't sleep. Talk about suffering. She'd fall asleep and we'd discuss what we'd written and what we should write the next day. So Lydia, here's how you helped. You could never get to sleep; you take after your dada. But each night we would stay up and take a night-night ride around Louisville to help put you to sleep; usually an hour long affair. But in the spirit of turning evil on its ear in unexpected ways, those rides turned out to be the way that we wrote the book, with mama and dada talking about each chapter, its contents and all that, all inspired by and facilitated by you. Thank you, little girl. Eventually wed go home, put you to bed and put on a record, pour a drink and light up a cigar then sit out on the porch to share and talk through the next days writing. The following evening wed write at a Starbucks with a view of the steeples of Churchill Downs, and then begin the cycle again. To that end, several things we're instrumental in this books creation and wed like to thank the following. Starbucks triple venti cappuccinos, CAO Italia cigars, St. Germains elderberry flower liquor, Peterson Irish flake pipe tobacco, and the music of I See Rowboats, Bjork, 16 Horsepower, Wovenhand and, of course, Johnny Cashs later recordings, particularly Aint No Grave. On the books structure, its a shoddy attempt to follow a form of Hebrew poetry, the chiasm (an X). The beginning and end are parallel, then the piece after the first and the second from the last, and so on and so forth. The turn is in the center, that's the most important part. Here it's the move from why we suffer to what we then do about it, from a study of the concept of suffering to its application for us, from suffering and the cross to suffering and union with Christ. The structure in each chapter is the story and then the theology or explanation, the reverse of the overall structure in each of the links. This is a little picture for us of
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the intersection of suffering and how two perspectives meet. The overall structure works from a take on the divine perspective (objective, grounded in Gods nature) then moving to its application (God acting in our world and experience). Each link starts from our experience, and then tries to move back into its meaning and explanation. In any case, we saw it as a little miniature of our experience of suffering and there being an explanation, a theology, although we may not be able to see, but still there. The device is counting down the days until Ezras death, so that the reader knows that is coming, or at least something ominous. But as the countdown continues and events grind to a point the reader sees more and more of the explanation behind it. This is our take at an image, a miniature of how God is controlling our story day by day, but may not show it to us. Nonetheless there is sense and plot and plan, even if kept behind the heavenly veil for now. The device allows a reader to see how that might look, even as a miniature with just our experience. By the last chapter these structures sort of dissolve, an attempt at a picture of how the tensions between this age and the next and the Old Person and the New Person will resolve and their structure disintegrate at the end of all things. Other things about the book. We tried share the view that we're not responsible for outcomes as we make our attempts at continuing on in this world and even trying to turn evil on its ear. That what we perceive as outcomes dont really matter; God may end up saving us from the furnace, but even if he doesnt he's still God. Thats our take on the book itself. It is okay if not a single soul reads it, or if anyone who does despises it. That's just fine. In some sense this book has been about giving Ezra his voice, writing his story and creating his testimony and if nothing happens, if no one reads or likes it, if not one grain of sand is moved, so be it. Whether he saves us from this furnace or not, God is still God and the angles and demons have the testimony. It's out there. Part of that is about closing this out as the final defiance of death and suffering. Where is your sting, oh death? Thats on Ezras grave and its explanation sits beside it, Luthers, In the midst of death we are surrounded by life. That's his profession. This book is some further color on that. Hopefully he's not too embarrassed. Ezra, or Christ. In any case, if that doesnt make sense, then just chalk it up to complete fantasy and delusion brought on by grief. But its his story with content that we found helpful throughout the experience. And we couldnt find it elsewhere, at least in a way that was obvious or approachable. So if there's anything you can take from, that's great. If hearing our story can help you with yours, or someone that you know, then fantastic. We're deeply moved and incredibly pleased that in some way that this could play a small part of turning this evil of Ezra's death on its ear. And if it's been
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a total bust, a complete waste, well you probably wouldnt be reading these final pages, but in any case maybe something in the list below will strike a better chord as you sing your verses in your own song of suffering. More Things The following is not a bibliography, but simply sources that might be worth exploring. They represent different theologies and religions and some of it is downright crazy. They also they contain some explicit and offense material; avoid it if youre easily offended or have a sensitive conscience. But God uses imperfect and even hostile agents to reveal, especially pictures and images. In any case, these are things we enjoy as good gifts and things that have helped us. Some are good gifts of heavenly father who wants us to enjoy creation, even in this valley of the shadow of death. Some are reflections of that cosmic story that resonates through all good literature and myth. Others are more for learning about details of particular subjects. Note it's much better to listen to this music on a descent system: lossless files and a DAC or tubes and vinyl or even a descent set of headphones, Grados are good, although they look like something out of a language learning lab. Thats all helpful to really hear lyrics and feel an emotional connection to their meaning. Same thing for the liquor. Life is short and God calls us to enjoy the good stuff; the really good stuff is coming soon. Theres also literature and fiction. Writing it, reading and thinking about it and envisioning a story, these are all part of creation, more specifically sub-creation. Humanity's endeavors to participate in the act of creating. Art, music, technology, food and liquor. For us, writing, however poor the results, is part of being in the image of God and having a drive to create. But theres also something too in reading and imagining the stories, literature, fiction, fairy tales and myth, all those things that reflect The Story of Redemption, whether sacrifice and suffering or requiem and comfort. When God creates, he creates exactly what he intends, but when we humans create it's always something more than we intend, something with meaning outside of itself. And thats never as true as when we reflect that great stories, either their shards in tales of fiction or our experiences with them in prose. As someone said, maybe even these stories themselves will one day in some sense become true. Books Thomas Howard Christ the Tiger

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Mark Twain Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles, Christ the Lord series, Servant of the Bones George MacDonald Lilith, Fairy Tales CS Lewis Most things, Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, A Grief Observed, The Weight of Glory JRR Tolkien Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Power of Myth Mircea Eliade The Sacred and the Profane Meredith Kline Almost anything, Images of the Spirit, Glory in our Midst, God, Heaven & Har Magedon Kenneth Bailey Almost anything, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, The Cross and the Prodigal, Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold Israels Story Leon Morris The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross Peter Brown Almost anything, Authority and the Sacred, The Making of Late Antiquity Heiko Oberman Almost anything, Luther: Man between God and the Devil Gerhard Forde On Being a Theologian of the Cross C F W Walther Proper Distinction Between Law and Gospel, Law and Gospel: How to Read and Apply the Bible Walther von Loewenich Luthers Theology of the Cross Paul Arden Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite George W. Forell Faith Active in Love Lyle Lange God so Loved the World Sukie Miller and Doris Ober Finding Hope When a Child Dies: What Other Cultures Can Teach Us Richard Eyer Pastoral Care under the Cross: God in the midst of Suffering
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Daniel M. Deutschlander The Theology of the Cross: Reflections on His Cross and Ours Gene Edward Veith Spirituality of the Cross Nicholas Wolterstorff Lament for a Son Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning Ian Brown The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son Lutheran hymnal complete with liturgy Luther Catechism (Large and Small), Christmas & Easter Sermons, Heidelberg Disputation, Bondage of the Will, On Christian Freedom, (Timothy Lull editor) Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings Frank Herbert Dune Series Dan Simmons Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, The Rise of Endymion Paul Timothy McCain Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions - A Reader's Edition of the Book of Concord Christopher Alexander A Pattern Language J. W. Acker The Lutheran Book of Prayer Edward Engelbrecht The Lutheran Study Bible: English Standard Version TheLastPsychiatrist.com Music 16 Horsepower Wovenhand Bach Especially the Masses Magdalena Kozena Lamento Mozart Requiem Johnny Cash Especially the American Recordings like Aint No Grave This Mortal Coil Michael Preatorius Leonard Bernstein Symphony No. 1 (Jeremiah) John Coltrane
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Julie London Concordia Publishing House Sing the Faith: The Small Catechism Set to Music Emmanuel Press The Brotherhood Prayer Book Movies & TV The Tree of Life (2011) The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Donnie Darko (2001) Heartless (2009) The Ninth Gate (1999) The Seventh Seal (1957) The Princess Bride (1987) The Godfather (1972) Unforgiven (1992) Blade Runner (1982) Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) Star Wars (trilogy, 1977-1983) Doctor Who (new TV series, 2005) Beowulf (2007) Franklyn (2008) The Devil's Advocate (1997) Tombstone (1993) Gran Torino (2008) Booze & Smokes Evan Williams Single Barrel Bourbon Veuve Clicquot Brut Yellow Label St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur Russell's Reserve Rye Whisky Cognac Tesseron Lot No 90
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Brokers London Dry Gin Distillerie de Biercee Poire Williams No 1 Gosling Black Seal Rum CAO Italia H Upman Bankers Reserve, Chairmans Reserve Montecristo Afrique JR Cigar Genuine Counterfeit Pre Embargo Cubans Misc Try and find some texts of sermons, or even better audio files -- that living word. Not slop but something from a confessional church that professes a body of beliefs, in confessions, that lets you knows what they believe (not as historical relics but active professions). Lay out different confession, and then find the ones that most closely comport to and summarize the scriptures. Although these are supposed to lay out the preaching and services sometimes they do not, and you'll have to exercise some judgment in whether a particular instance of a congregation, its service and its preaching, is on track within them. Our take is the Lutheran Confessions and the WELS. Then find audio files of sermons, or better yet entire services of the liturgy and divine service. You can actively listen or leave them on in the background.

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Appendix Funeral Sermon Sermon at the Order of Christian Funeral of Ezra Augustinus Rosenthal Rev. Steven Lange Hope Lutheran Church (WELS), Louisville, KY February 26th, 2011 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus Christ our Risen and Victorious Savior, dear fellow redeemed. Media vita in morte sumus. It's Latin for, "In the midst of life, we are surrounded by death." If you had lived in the Middle Ages when that phrase first made its way into the liturgical church music for the season of Lent, you would have understood very, very well, what that meant. Because the people at that time knew that, well, that was a very regular part of life. People did not live as long as they live today. Children regularly died before they reached their first birth. Mothers died while giving birth to children. Diseases, that today we barely even think of, were fatal. Plagues wiped out millions of people. Wars devastated huge swaths of the world that everybody knew. Death was a very big part of life. And even today, while we are in the midst of life, death surrounds us. I got the paper in this morning and on the front page was a picture of a washed-out Amish buggy that had been caught in a flash-flood, 4 young Amish children who were swept away in that flash-flood, ages 11, 8, 5, and 5 months. And of course the most immediate reminder that in the midst of life we are surrounded by death for us today is the fact that we are here today at the funeral of Ezra Rosenthal, whose earthly life spanned 32 days after he emerged from his mother's womb. It's a hard, harsh truth to have to come to terms with. But it is a very real truth that all of us have to deal with because even in the midst of our life, even though we don't like to have to confront it, we are surrounded by death and it makes you wonder why. Why does there have to be death in this world? God was supposed to be a good God, he was supposed to be a loving God. Why would he allow death to come into this world? Why would he allow death to come to a child who is only 32 days old?

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The Bible tells us there is one reason why death is in this world. There is so much death in this world because there is so much sin in this world. And that sin has its origin in one man, Adam. Our first father, whom God created to be perfect, whom God created so that he loved God, and loved everything that God loved and hated everything that God hated and was perfectly in sync with God in everything. But unfortunately Adam decided that he was going to give in to Satan who had done absolutely nothing for him except give him some empty promises and turn his back on the God who had done everything for him. And when Adam fell into sin, all of humanity fell into sin. Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans, that sin entered this world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men because all sinned. Every single descendant of Adam with one very notable exception that we'll talk about later, has been born with sin. And the reason we are here today, is because Ezra Rosenthal too, was born with sin. You look at his pictures and you wonder how an absolutely beautiful child like that could be sinful. But he inherited his sin from his parents, who came by it honestly from their parents, who came by it honestly from their parents, all the way back to Adam and that is true for every last one of us. From the moment of our conception, our Lord tells us we're sinful. Ezra was a sinner. And because the wages of sin is death, we are here today, confronting the very depressing, discouraging fact that even in the midst of life we are surrounded by death. If that were all I had to say today, you wasted your time in coming here. Because what I've said so far gives us absolutely no hope, no comfort. All it tells us is that we by nature sinners, deserve nothing from God but death and punishment. But thankfully that's not all I'm going to say to you today. In fact, I'm going to take a cue from Martin Luther which I'm very thankful that Josh and Melanie pointed this little reference out to me. In his commentary on Genesis, Martin Luther took that old phrase -Media vita in morte sumus -- in the midst of life we are in death and he turned it on its head. He said: Media morte in vita sumus -- in the midst of death we are in life. And what a beautiful expression of the reality that is for us Christians. Its the reality that Paul told the Christians in Corinth about in his first letter to them, chapter 15. He said to them, "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put
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all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death." Sin and death came into this world through one man, Adam. Resurrection and life came into this world through one man, Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus, God's own son, came into this world to counteract everything Adam had done when he plunged humanity into sin. Just as Adam stood as a representative for all humanity in the Garden of Eden, Jesus Christ stood as a representative for all humanity as he lived a perfect life on your behalf, on my behalf, on Ezra's behalf. Jesus was not born with sin. He was that one very important exception I talked about, the one descendant of Adam who was not tainted by sin. He came into this world holy and perfect and pure and on your behalf, on my behalf, on behalf of all humanity he lived a perfect life, never once having even a thought that was out of line with what his Heavenly Father wanted him to think. And then that representative of humanity, Jesus Christ, who stood as a representative for all humanity throughout his life also died as a representative of all humanity when he suffered and died on the cross. Every sin that every human being has ever committed from Adam all the way until the last moment that this earth exists, Christ Jesus took upon himself and paid for every last one of them when he suffered and died on the cross. But even that wasn't the end. To make sure that we would have no doubt that He had indeed paid for every sin, that He indeed had opened the gates of heaven to all who believe in Him, Christ Jesus rose from the dead, guaranteeing to us and to all who believe in Him, that we will live with Him forever. It is because of what Christ has done that we can say with Martin Luther, that in the midst of death we are in life. And it is because of Christ's resurrection, that we can say those words with absolute confidence about Ezra. I know where Ezra is right now. And it is not in this tiny, little coffin. Ezra is in heaven with his Lord. And the reason I know that is because God Himself has told me, not through some special revelation, not through some vision, but through the promises that He has given to us attached to this wonderful washing with water through the Word which Ezra received. On January 24th, in the emergency room in Kosair Children's Hospital, He was baptized in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and in that miraculous washing, he became in Christ. God created faith in that little boy's heart and that faith held onto his Savior. And in that baptism, Ezra, who by himself was a sinner, was clothed with the perfection that Christ won for him. He was washed of all his sins through the blood of Christ. He was connected to Christ's life and death and
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resurrection so closely that it was just as if Ezra had done it himself. Because Ezra is in Christ, we know where he is right now. He is in heaven with his Savior. And now not only is he in Christ, he is with Christ forever. As Paul pointed out in our second lesson, even God's people grieve when confronted with the death of a loved one. How could we not? Death is not something God intended for us to have to experience. But just as Paul went on to say, "we don't grieve as those who have no hope." No, we grieve as those who do have hope. Hope that is sure and certain and built on the bedrock of God's promises which cannot fail. May these promises, may this confidence give you hope and strength and peace as you grieve as one who has supreme hope, as you continue your walk through this life which God has given to you, until the time comes when you no longer are just in Christ, but are with Him forever, even as Ezra is now. Amen -

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Birth and Death Announcement -

Thanks to our friend Nathan Walker for the art and making this announcement. -

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Book Structure A - An Introduction B - Suffering and God C - Suffering and the Christian God D - Suffering and the Gospel E - Suffering and the Cross E' - Suffering and Union with Christ D' - Suffering and the Hiddenness of God C' - Suffering and the Church B' - Suffering and the World A' - A Conclusion

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Work Notice Email Dear Friends, On January 24th, we gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Ezra Augustinus Rosenthal. Unfortunately there were significant complications and on February 24 he died. After weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit, we were able to bring him back home for some time where we were able to hold and enjoy him and let Lydia, a wonderful big sister, care for and play with him: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ezrarosenthal He died peacefully and quietly, a welcomed event as he was having ever increasingly difficult complications and while we grieve the loss he did a great job during his time here and were confident hes now with his creator & redeemer. Weve valued your support and kindness; your thoughts and prayers continue to be appreciated. Melanie, Josh & Lydia In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life - Luther -

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Church Members Thanks Email The Rosenthal family wishes to thank everyone for their prayers and support, including Pastor Lange for presenting the Gospel and its Theology of the Cross in Ezras funeral service, an appreciated solace in this world and a certain hope for the next. For those interested, audio recordings of the service and sermon can be found in the sermon archive at: www.pastorlangessermons.com/2011/03/27/service-funeral-service www.pastorlangessermons.com/2011/03/27/sermon-funeral-sermon Sincerely, Melanie, Josh & Lydia In the midst of death, we are surrounded by life Luther -

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Blog Post Milk Mommy LESSONS FROM AN INFERTILE SOCIAL WORKER by Becky Hill www.lessonsfromaninfertilesocialworker.blogspot.com Another amazing milk mommy for baby E Post: http://goo.gl/ViWE4 Tuesday, March 15, 2011 This weekend I picked up milk from a family whose beautiful little boy died when he was just a month old. No, I don't know what happened to him. I just know how sad I feel every time I nurse baby E with the milk that was meant for this other baby. I've been encouraged to feel blessed by the family's generous gift, and I do, but I can't stop thinking about their horrific loss. I can't help feeling like maybe we made it worse for them. I never imagined accepting donor milk would be so emotional. I've watched baby E's milk mommies have varying reactions to giving us milk. Several of the mommas have wanted to just talk and talk (which I've certainly enjoyed!). Many of those, I think, were attached to their milk (for good reason - that stuff really is liquid gold!) and I think the talking helps them feel better about letting go of it. Some of them have handed it off with smiles, instantly comfortable. In the end they've all seemed to feel happy about being able to help us in this special way. This momma, though... it was just so sad. When she brought it up from the freezer, she broke down, sobbing. I felt like I was taking something that connected her to her baby, which, in reality, I was. I felt like I was causing her undue pain. As we hugged, I told her how sorry I was, and how grateful for this gift. We all cried. I think about their whole family every time baby E and I sit down with the milk meant for that sweet little soul. I pray that their family's grief eases into peace. I hope that their gift to us helped them move a little closer to healing, instead of feeling like yet another loss. The momma gave me a picture of her beautiful boy "to put in baby E's scrapbook", and be assured I will do exactly that. I will write - and later tell him - about the brave family who made a selfless choice to share a precious gift with us. I will never forget this family. Their loss, their

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strength, their pain, their selflessness, their beauty have all touched me profoundly. Today's lesson - Strength, beauty, selflessness, grace take on many forms. Humans are capable of them all, even in the midst of great pain. To be a witness of such acts is a gift. Posted by Becky at 10:06 AM Labels: breastfeeding, milk mommies 3 COMMENTS: Myra Oh wow, what a brave way to turn a horrible loss into something good. God bless her... MARCH 15, 2011 10:37 AM Becky Yes, her and her husband. They certainly could use all of our prayers. MARCH 15, 2011 10:57 AM Suzie Now I'm crying, too.... what a strong and self-less woman. MARCH 15, 2011 11:40 AM -

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Funeral Service Order of Service for the Christian Funeral of Ezra Augustinus Rosenthal Hope Lutheran Church, Louisville, KY February 26, 2011 1:00 PM GREETING AND PRAYER M: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. C: Amen. M: We have come together to seek Gods comfort in our sorrow and to rejoice in the promise of the resurrection. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who said, Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, you wept at the grave of your friend Lazarus, and you consoled Mary and Martha in their distress. Draw near to us who mourn for Ezra, and dry the tears of all who weep. Calm our troubled hearts, dispel our doubts and fears, and lead us to praise you for having brought him to faith. In your rising from the dead, you conquered death and opened the gates to eternal life. Strengthen us with your Word, and lead us through this earthly life until at last we are united with you and all the saints in glory everlasting. C: Amen. PSALM 23 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his names sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
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HYMN Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice Hymn 377, st. 1-6 RESURRECTION COMFORT M: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. The apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Jesus gives us this comfort: I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. M: Death has been swallowed up in victory! Thanks be to God! C: He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. M: When Christ, who is our life, appears, C: Then we also will appear with him in glory. M: We will be before the throne of God C: And serve him day and night in his temple. M: Never again will we hunger; C: Never again will we thirst M: For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd. He will lead us to springs of living water, C: And God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. M: Let us pray. God of all grace, you sent your Son, Jesus, to destroy the power of death and to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Make us certain that because he lives, we too shall live. Comfort us with your promise that neither death nor life nor things present nor things to come shall be able to separate us from your love which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. C: Amen. FIRST LESSON Isaiah 25:1-9 Our Lord has defeated death. 1 O LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done marvelous things, things planned long ago. 2 You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners stronghold a city no more; it will never be rebuilt. 3
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Therefore strong peoples will honor you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you. 4 You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall 5 and like the heat of the desert. You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled. 6 On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged winethe best of meats and the finest of wines. 7 On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. 9 In that day they will say, Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation. (NIV1984) PSALM Psalm 16 Page 68 in the front part of the hymnal. SECOND LESSON 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 We grieve, but not as those who have no hope. 13 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lords own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18 Therefore encourage each other with these words. (NIV1984) GOSPEL Luke 24:13-35 The risen Savior reveals himself to his disciples in Emmaus. 13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him. 17 He asked them, What are you discussing together as you walk along? They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked
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him, Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days? 19 What things? he asked. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied. He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didnt find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. 25 He said to them, How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. 28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us? 33 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34 and saying, It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon. 35 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. (NIV1984) HYMN Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice Hymn 377, st. 7-10 SERMON 1 Corinthians 15:20-26 20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (NIV1984)
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APOSTLES CREED C: I believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. HYMN Lord, When Your Glory I Shall See Hymn 219 PRAYER M: Almighty God, we praise you for the great company of saints who have finished their lives in faith and now rest from their labors. We remember especially Ezra, whom you have redeemed by the blood of your Son and received as your dear child through Holy Baptism. We thank you for giving him to us as a companion on our earthly pilgrimage. In your compassion, comfort all who are sad in this hour. Lord, in your mercy, C: Hear our prayer. M: We praise you for your love in Christ, which sustains us in life and death. In our earthly sorrows, help us find strength in the fellowship of the church, joy in the forgiveness of sins, and hope in the resurrection to eternal life. Lord, in your mercy, C: Hear our prayer. M: You do not leave us comfortless but strengthen and care for us through your Word and sacrament. You give us family, friends, and neighbors to help when there is loneliness now and in the days to come. Brighten our future with a firm trust in your promises and care. Lord, in your mercy, C: Hear our prayer. M: Remove our fears, and make us bold to pray with confidence as our Savior has taught us: LORDS PRAYER C: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who
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trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. BLESSING M: The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord look on you with favor and give you peace. C: Amen. Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Order of Service Copyright . 2004 Northwestern Publishing House. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. -

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Burial CHRISTIAN BURIAL: THE COMMITTAL VERSES OF COMFORT M: God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyesI, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! [Jesus said to Martha at the death of her brother:] I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. GREETING When all have gathered, the minister says: M: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fadekept in heaven for you. PRAYER M: Let us pray. Almighty God, by the death of your Son, Jesus Christ, you destroyed death, by his rest in the tomb you sanctified the graves of your saints, and by his glorious resurrection you brought life and immortality to light so that all who die in him live in peace and joy. Receive our thanks for the victory over death and the grave which Christ won for us. Keep us in everlasting fellowship with all who wait for him on earth and with all in heaven, who are with him who is the Resurrection and the Life, Jesus Christ our Lord. C: Amen. LESSON After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white
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robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen! Then one of the elders asked me, These in white robeswho are they, and where did they come from? I answered, Sir, you know. And he said, These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them. (Revelation 7:9-15) After the Lesson, the minister says: M: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. COMMITTAL The minister stands at the head of the casket. M: It has pleased the almighty God, in his wisdom, to take out of this world the soul of our departed brother. We now commit his body to the groundearth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dustin the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. The minister may make the sign of the cross by pouring sand on the casket. M: May God the Father, who created this body; May God the Son, who by his blood redeemed this body together with the soul; May God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be his temple; keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh. C: Amen. M: Lord, remember us in your kingdom as we pray: LORDS PRAYER Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
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One of the following prayers is said. M: O everlasting God and Father, you are not a God of the dead but of the living. Keep us strong in faith in your dear Son, that thoughts of death may not trouble us. Give us a rich measure of your Holy Spirit, that we may lead a Christian life, prepare for a blessed departure, and finally fall asleep in peace, confident that when you open our graves with the sound of the last trumpet, you will call us forth again to life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. C: Amen. BLESSING M: May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. C: Amen. -

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Links www.ASongofSuffering.com Movies and pictures of Ezra: www.flickr.com/photos/ezrarosenthal/ Movies and pictures of Lydia: www.flickr.com/photos/lydiarosenthal/

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